History > 2007 > USA > Gay rights (I)

Gay Enclaves Face

Prospect of Being Passé

October 30, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24 — This Halloween, the Glindas, gladiators and harem boys of the Castro — along with untold numbers who plan to dress up as Senator Larry E. Craig, this year’s camp celebrity — will be celebrating behind closed doors. The city’s most popular Halloween party, in America’s largest gay neighborhood, is canceled.

The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.

For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.

These are wrenching times for San Francisco’s historic gay village, with population shifts, booming development, and a waning sense of belonging that is also being felt in gay enclaves across the nation, from Key West, Fla., to West Hollywood, as they struggle to maintain cultural relevance in the face of gentrification.

There has been a notable shift of gravity from the Castro, with young gay men and lesbians fanning out into less-expensive neighborhoods like Mission Dolores and the Outer Sunset, and farther away to Marin and Alameda Counties, “mirroring national trends where you are seeing same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer and senior research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations by Dr. Gates for The New York Times. “Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York,” he said. “Now you can just go to Kansas City.”

In the Castro, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society held public meetings earlier this year to grapple with such questions as “Are Gay Neighborhoods Worth Saving?”

With nine major developments planned for Market Street, including a splashy 113-unit condominium designed by Arquitectonica, anxiety about the future is swirling. Median home prices hover around $870,000. Local institutions like Cliff’s Variety, a hardware store selling feathered boas (year-round) are not about to vanish from this storied homeland of the gay rights movement. But the prospect of half-million-dollar condos inhabited by many straight people underscores a demographic shift.

“The Castro, and to a lesser extent the West Village, was where you went to express yourself,” said Don F. Reuter, a New York author who is researching a book on the rise and fall of gay neighborhoods, or “gayborhoods.”

“Claiming physical territory was a powerful act,” Mr. Reuter said. “But the gay neighborhood is becoming a past-tense idea.”

In the Castro, the influx of baby strollers — some being pushed by straight parents, some by gay parents — is perhaps the most blatant sign of change. “The Castro has gone from a gay-ghetto mentality to a family mentality,” said Wes Freas, a broker with Zephyr Real Estate. The arrival of a Pottery Barn down the street from the birthplaces of the AIDS quilt and the Rainbow Flag is a nod to change.

Sakura Ferris, a 28-year-old mother of a toddler, moved to the Castro because she liked its new eclecticism. At the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, a parent hot spot rife with Froggie pull-toys, Ms. Ferris’s tot mingles with infants in onesies that read, “I Love My Daddies.”

The Castro remains a top tourist destination for gay and lesbian visitors. But Joe D’Alessandro, president and C.E.O. of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, and a gay parent who lives in the Castro, predicted that eventually the neighborhood would go the way of North Beach, “still a historic Italian neighborhood though Italians don’t necessarily live there anymore.”

The Castro became a center for gay liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a declining Irish Catholic and Scandinavian neighborhood. At its helm was Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco whose slaying in 1978 by a disgruntled former supervisor, Dan White, galvanized the community and set off riots when White was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder.

Decimated during the AIDS epidemic of 1990-1995, the neighborhood rebounded in the boom economy of the late 1990s. But the social forces that gave rise to the Castro and other gay neighborhoods like the West Village and West Hollywood may be becoming passé.

While the state’s Eighth Congressional District, which includes the Castro, saw an increase of about 20 percent in the number of same-sex couples from 2002 to 2006, surrounding districts had a 38 percent increase in same-sex couples, according to Dr. Gates.

In West Hollywood, another traditional gay haven, the graying of the population and the high cost of real estate have resulted in once-gay watering holes like the Spike and the I Candy Lounge going hetero. A new kind of gentrification is under way in which young gay waiters and school teachers move instead to Hollywood and other surrounding neighborhoods. “We often clamored for equality where gay and straight could coexist,” said Mayor John Duran of West Hollywood, who is gay. “But we weren’t prepared to give up our subculture to negotiate that exchange.”

While the Castro has been the center of a movement, it is also home to “an important political constituency,” said Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate sociology professor at Indiana University and the author of “Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco 1950-1994”

“When people were angry about Dan White they were able to assemble quickly, spilling out of the bars,” Professor Armstrong said. “Physical location mattered.”

The Castro still has the city’s largest progressive Democratic organization, the Harvey Milk Club. A survey of registered voters earlier this year by David Binder, a San Francisco political analyst, found that 33 percent of the Eighth District identified themselves as gay or lesbian, compared with 13 percent citywide.

The Castro’s activist legacy continues to exert a strong emotional pull: the corner of 18th and Castro Streets, where Harvey Milk; Diana, Princess of Wales; and Matthew Shepard were mourned and where gay marriage was fleetingly celebrated, is for many a mythic homeland.

Amanda Rankin, a 40-year-old tourist from Hamilton, Ontario, was taking a “Cruisin’ the Castro” walking tour with three lesbian friends the other day.

“In America there still seems to be a lot of sexual repression left over from Puritanism and the pilgrims,” Ms. Rankin said. “Then there’s San Francisco.”

But its legacy has not prevented the neighborhood from harsh urban realities. As San Francisco real estate skyrocketed in the 1990s, the Castro had the city’s highest concentration of evictions, as speculators “flipped” buildings, many of them housing people with disabilities and AIDS, to convert to market-rate apartments, said Brian Basinger, the founder of the AIDS Housing Alliance.

Even before Halloween, the Castro was grappling with violence and crime. Allegations of racial profiling at the Badlands, the neighborhood’s most popular bar, led to a widespread boycott in 2005 and intervention by the city’s Human Rights Commission.

The highly publicized rape of a man in the Castro in September 2006 led to the formation of Castro on Patrol, a whistle-wielding citizens’ street brigade. In that attack, Mark Welch was raped five blocks from a store he managed on Castro Street. He said in that he later learned there had been two previous similar rapes in the neighborhood, but that had not been widely reported.

He said it took months for it to surface on a sex-crimes Web site maintained by the authorities. There are signs that the dispersing of gay people beyond the Castro vortex and the rise of the Internet are also contributing to a declining sense of community. An annual survey by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Community Initiative indicated that in 2007 only 36 percent of men under 29 said there was a gay community in the city with which they could identify.

Doug Sebesta, the group’s executive director and a medical sociologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said, “I’ve had therapists who have told me they are asking their clients to go back to bars as a way of social interaction.”

The Internet is not a replacement for a neighborhood where people are involved in issues beyond themselves, said John Newsome, an African-American who co-founded the group And Castro For All after the Badlands incident. “There are a lot of really lonely gay people sitting in front of a computer,” he said.

Which is why the cancellation of the Halloween party by the city has provoked such a sense of loss. Many residents say that their night has been taken away. “It’s proof that whatever sense of safety we have is incredibly tenuous, “ Mr. Newsome said.

The city is shutting down public transportation to the Castro on Halloween and has begun a Web site, homeforhalloween.com, that lists “fun” alternatives, including a Halloween blood drive and a “Monster Bash” — in San Mateo.

On a recent Saturday, Sister Roma, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an activist coterie of drag queens, sashayed down Castro Street in heavy eye shadow and a gold lamé top. Though she looked well prepared for Halloween, she said she planned to be in hiding that night.

She wasn’t feeling too deprived, however.

“Sweetie,” she said, “every day is Halloween in the Castro.”

Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passé, NYT, 30.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30gay.html

Aging and Gay,

and Facing Prejudice in Twilight

October 9, 2007
The New York Times
By JANE GROSS

Even now, at 81 and with her memory beginning to fade, Gloria Donadello recalls her painful brush with bigotry at an assisted-living center in Santa Fe, N.M. Sitting with those she considered friends, “people were laughing and making certain kinds of comments, and I told them, ‘Please don’t do that, because I’m gay.’”

The result of her outspokenness, Ms. Donadello said, was swift and merciless. “Everyone looked horrified,” she said. No longer included in conversation or welcome at meals, she plunged into depression. Medication did not help. With her emotional health deteriorating, Ms. Donadello moved into an adult community nearby that caters to gay men and lesbians.

“I felt like I was a pariah,” she said, settled in her new home. “For me, it was a choice between life and death.”

Elderly gay people like Ms. Donadello, living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.

Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated. Others live in fear of the day when they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care. That dread alone can be damaging, physically and emotionally, say geriatric doctors, psychiatrists and social workers.

The plight of the gay elderly has been taken up by a generation of gay men and lesbians, concerned about their own futures, who have begun a national drive to educate care providers about the social isolation, even outright discrimination, that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients face.

Several solutions are emerging. In Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and other urban centers, so-called L.G.B.T. Aging Projects are springing up, to train long-term care providers. At the same time, there is a move to separate care, with the comfort of the familiar.

In the Boston suburbs, the Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home will break ground in December for a complex that includes a unit for the gay and lesbian elderly. And Stonewall Communities in Boston has begun selling homes designed for older gay people with support services similar to assisted-living centers. There are also openly gay geriatric case managers who can guide clients to compassionate services.

“Many times gay people avoid seeking help at all because of their fears about how they’ll be treated,” said David Aronstein, president of Stonewall Communities. “Unless they see affirming actions, they’ll assume the worst.”

Homophobia directed at the elderly has many faces.

Home health aides must be reminded not to wear gloves at inappropriate times, for example while opening the front door or making the bed, when there is no evidence of H.I.V. infection, said Joe Collura, a nurse at the largest home care agency in Greenwich Village.

A lesbian checking into a double room at a Chicago rehabilitation center was greeted by a roommate yelling, “Get the man out of here!” The lesbian patient, Renae Ogletree, summoned a friend to take her elsewhere.

Sometimes tragedy results. In one nursing home, an openly gay man, without family or friends, was recently moved off his floor to quiet the protests of other residents and their families. He was given a room among patients with severe disabilities or dementia. The home called upon Amber Hollibaugh, now a senior strategist at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the author of the first training curriculum for nursing homes. Ms. Hollibaugh assured the 79-year-old man that a more humane solution would be found, but he hanged himself, Ms. Hollibaugh said. She was unwilling to identify the nursing home or even its East Coast city, because she still consults there, among other places.

While this outcome is exceedingly rare, moving gay residents to placate others is common, said Dr. Melinda Lantz, chief of geriatric psychiatry at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, who spent 13 years in a similar post at the Jewish Home and Hospital Lifecare System. “When you’re stuck and have to move someone because they’re being ganged up on, you put them with people who are very confused,” Dr. Lantz said. “That’s a terrible nuts-and-bolts reality.”

The most common reaction, in a generation accustomed to being in the closet, is a retreat back to the invisibility that was necessary for most of their lives, when homosexuality was considered both a crime and a mental illness. A partner is identified as a brother. No pictures or gay-themed books are left around.

Elderly heterosexuals also suffer the indignities of old age, but not to the same extent, Dr. Lantz said. “There is something special about having to hide this part of your identity at a time when your entire identity is threatened,” she said. “That’s a faster pathway to depression, failure to thrive and even premature death.”

The movement to improve conditions for the gay elderly is driven by demographics. There are an estimated 2.4 million gay, lesbian or bisexual Americans over the age of 55, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. That estimate was extrapolated by Dr. Gates using census data that counts only same-sex couples along with other government data that counts both single and coupled gay people. Among those in same-sex couples, the number of gay men and women over 55 has almost doubled from 2000 to 2006, Dr. Gates said, to 416,000, from 222,000.

California is the only state with a law saying the gay elderly have special needs, like other members of minority groups. A new law encourages training for employees and contractors who work with the elderly and permits state financing of projects like gay senior centers.

Federal law provides no antidiscrimination protections to gay people. Twenty states explicitly outlaw such discrimination in housing and public accommodations. But no civil rights claims have been made by gay residents of nursing homes, according to the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which litigates and monitors such cases. Potential plaintiffs, the organization says, are too frail or frightened to bring action.

The problem is compounded, experts say, because most of the gay elderly do not declare their identity, and institutions rarely make an effort to find out who they are to prepare staff members and residents for what may be an unfamiliar situation.

So that is where Lisa Krinsky, the director of the L.G.B.T. Aging Project in Massachusetts, begins her “cultural competency” training sessions, including one last month at North Shore Elder Services in Danvers.

Admissions forms for long-term care have boxes to check for marital status and next of kin. But none of the boxes match the circumstances of gay men or lesbians. Ms. Krinsky suggested follow-up questions like “Who is important in your life?”

In the last two years, Ms. Krinsky has trained more than 2,000 employees of agencies serving the elderly across Massachusetts. She presents them with common problems and nudges them toward solutions.

A gay man fired his home health aide. Did the case manager ask why? The patient might be receiving unwanted Bible readings from someone who thinks homosexuality is a sin. What about a lesbian at an assisted-living center refusing visitors? Maybe she is afraid that her friends’ appearance will give her away to fellow residents.

“We need to be open and sensitive,” Ms. Krinsky said, “but not wrap them in a rainbow flag and make them march in a parade.”

Some of the gay elderly chose openness as the quickest and most painless way of finding compassionate care. That is the case for Bruce Steiner, 76, of Sudbury, Mass., whose 71-year-old partner, Jim Anthony, has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and can no longer feed himself or speak.

Mr. Steiner is resisting a nursing home for Mr. Anthony, even after several hospitalizations last year. The care had been uneven, Mr. Steiner said, and it was unclear whether homosexuality was a factor. But Mr. Steiner decided to take no chances and hired a gay case manager who helped him “do some filtering.”

They selected a home care agency with a reputation for treating gay clients well. Preparing for an unknown future, Mr. Steiner also visited several nursing homes, “giving them the opportunity to encourage or discourage me.” His favorite “is one run by the Carmelite sisters, of all things, because they had a sense of humor.”

They are the exception, not the rule.

Jalna Perry, a 77-year-old lesbian and psychiatrist in Boston, is out, she said, but does not broadcast the fact, which would feel unnatural to someone of her generation. Dr. Perry, who uses a wheelchair, has spent time in assisted-living centers and nursing homes. There, she said, her guard was up all the time.

Dr. Perry came out to a few other residents in the assisted-living center — artsy, professional women who she figured would accept her. But even with them, she said, “You don’t talk about gay things.” Mostly, she kept to herself. “You size people up,” Dr. Perry said. “You know the activities person is a lesbian; that’s a quick read.”

Trickier was an aide who was gentle with others but surly and heavy-handed when helping Dr. Perry with personal tasks. Did the aide suspect and disapprove? With a male nurse who was gay, Dr. Perry said she felt “extremely comfortable.”

“Except for that nurse, I was very lonely,” she said. “It would have been nice if someone else was out among the residents.”

Such loneliness is a source of dread to the members of the Prime Timers, a Boston social group for older gay men. Among the regulars, who meet for lunch once a week, are Emile Dufour, 70, a former priest, and Fred Riley, 75, who has a 30-year heterosexual marriage behind him. The pair have been together for two decades and married in 2004. But their default position, should they need nursing care, will be to hide their gayness, as they did for half a lifetime, rather than face slurs and whispers.

“As strong as I am today,” Mr. Riley said, “when I’m at the gate of the nursing home, the closet door is going to slam shut behind me.”

Dan Frosch contributed reporting.

    Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight, NYT, 9.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/09aged.html?hp

Episcopal Church

Faces Deadline on Gay Issues

September 16, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

Ever since the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire four years ago, forecasts of a rupture over homosexuality within the church or with the rest of the global Anglican Communion accompanied each big church meeting, only to fade.

But as the bishops of the Episcopal Church approach their semiannual meeting this week in New Orleans, the predictions are being taken very seriously.

At the top of the agenda for the Sept. 20-25 gathering will be a directive issued by the leaders of the Anglican Communion to stop consecrating openly gay and lesbian bishops and to ban blessings of same-sex unions or risk a diminished status in the communion, the world’s third-largest Christian denomination.

The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, who is the spiritual leader of the communion, will attend the meeting. It will be the first time Archbishop Williams has met with the church’s House of Bishops since the 2003 consecration of the gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The communion’s directive asks for a response from the Episcopal Church by Sept. 30.

In interviews last week, bishops and church experts who hold a range of views on homosexuality said they expected the House of Bishops would stop short, perhaps far short, of meeting the directive’s demands. That could widen rifts, as several dioceses have said they would break away from the Episcopal Church and primates of several provinces, or regions, have spoken of leaving the global communion.

“I think the meeting will add some clarity to what has already taken place,” said Bishop Kirk S. Smith of Arizona. “I think clearly there is going to be some sort of exodus from the communion.”

Currently, the Episcopal Church urges, but does not require, dioceses and bishops to refrain from electing openly gay and lesbian bishops. None have been elected since Bishop Robinson, but the Rev. Tracey Lind, who is a lesbian, is among the candidates to become the new bishop of Chicago.

The church does not have rites of blessing for same-sex unions, but some individual bishops permit blessing ceremonies in their dioceses.

At a February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, three dozen primates of the Anglican Communion issued the directive on gay bishops and same-sex unions. They also demanded that the Episcopal Church create a parallel leadership structure to serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose their church’s liberal stance on homosexuality.

Conservative Anglicans hailed the primates’ directive as an affirmation of traditional biblical teachings on homosexuality for the world’s 77 million Anglicans, of whom 2.4 million are Episcopalians.

A month later, Episcopal bishops rejected the parallel structure, saying it would compromise the church’s autonomy. Since then, several more parishes among the 7,700 Episcopal congregations in the United States have left the church and placed themselves under the authority of foreign bishops, mostly in Africa.

Moreover, the provinces of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, passionate critics of the Episcopal Church, have consecrated conservative American clergy as their bishops in the United States to serve disaffected congregations, a move Episcopal Church leaders view as a violation of the church’s authority.

“There already is a separation,” said the Rev. William Sachs, director of the Center for Reconciliation and Mission at St. Stephen’s Church in Richmond, Va. “The question is, how far does it spread?”

The answer may soon become apparent. Several dissident dioceses, like Quincy, Ill., San Joaquin, Calif., and Pittsburgh, are taking steps to align themselves with a foreign province, should the Episcopal bishops refuse the terms of the directive, said Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who leads a network of conservatives seeking alternative oversight. Such departures would probably lead to years of litigation over church property, experts said.

Unlike bishops in provinces that are more hierarchical, bishops in the Episcopal Church cannot legislate on behalf of the church, experts said. Only the church’s General Convention can do that, they said, and its next meeting is in 2009.

Still, the bishops could overturn their earlier decision regarding the alternative oversight structure or state that they would categorically refuse to approve the election of openly gay and lesbian clergy members to the episcopate.

Few expect that to happen, and some bishops, including some theological conservatives, take issue with outsiders telling the American church what to do.

“I think they’re pushing us because they want to polarize the issue,” said Bishop Henry Parsley of Alabama, who did not vote for Bishop Robinson’s consecration. “The primates want us to say that we don’t approve public rites of blessing, and we have not done that. They don’t want us to approve gay bishops in committed relationships, and the 2006 general convention resolution makes that unlikely. Basically, what I’m saying is that what they are asking is essentially already the case.” If the bishops take such a position, that would amount to a rejection of the directive. Archbishop Williams would “have a hard time carrying on with business as usual,” said the Rev. Ephraim Radner, a leading Episcopal conservative and professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto.

The archbishop might then take steps to reduce the Episcopal Church’s role and representation in the communion, Mr. Radner and others said.

Some African primates have also spoken openly about leaving the Anglican Communion, which would create great disarray in their provinces, as not all their bishops or clergy are willing to break with the communion over this issue, Episcopal bishops and experts said.

“This is the most significant meeting in the last three years,” Mr. Radner said. “I’m not saying it will resolve everything, but it will set in motion responses that have been brewing for a long time. It doesn’t matter what happens, there’s going to be response from a whole range of folks in the Anglican Communion that will determine the future of communion.”

    Episcopal Church Faces Deadline on Gay Issues, NYT, 16.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/us/16episcopal.html?hp

N.M. Gays Can Marry in Massachusetts

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:04 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- Gay couples from New Mexico can marry in Massachusetts because their home state has not explicitly banned same-sex marriage, Massachusetts officials say.

New Mexico joins Rhode Island as the only states whose gay residents are allowed to marry in Massachusetts, the only state that has legalized same-sex marriage.

Stanley Nyberg, Massachusetts' Registrar of Vital Records, instructed city and town clerks in a July 18 notice to give marriage licenses to gay couples from New Mexico.

Massachusetts began marrying same-sex couples in 2004. Then-Gov. Mitt Romney prohibited out-of-state couples from marrying in the state, citing a 1913 law that bars Massachusetts from marrying couples unable to legally marry in their home states.

In March 2006, the state's highest court ruled that gay couples from other states could not marry in Massachusetts if their home state expressly prohibited gay marriage.

    N.M. Gays Can Marry in Massachusetts, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gay-Marriage.html

NYC Has Reason to Celebrate Gay Pride

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:58 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York's gay pride parade is traditionally a mix of politics and campy pageantry, and the state Assembly's move toward legalizing same-sex marriage has heightened the atmosphere this year. But parade organizers are smarting over the city's rejection of a request to hold a street fair in an area with the city's heaviest concentration of gay-oriented businesses.

The parade, set for Sunday on Fifth Avenue, is one of dozens that take place annually around the world. It commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising, in which patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar resisted a police raid.

Dennis Spafford, a spokesman for parade organizers Heritage of Pride, said he expects a million marchers and spectators at this year's parade, which comes five days after the Democratic-controlled Assembly passed the gay marriage bill, 85-61.

Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer supports the measure, but the Republican-led state Senate is not expected to act on it any time soon. Massachusetts is the only U.S. state that has legalized same-sex marriage so far.

''We are now more sure than ever that New York will do the equal and just thing,'' said Cathy Marino-Thomas, co-executive director of Marriage Equality New York, a group that promotes legalizing gay marriage.

For the past 14 years, the gay pride parade has been followed by Pridefest, a West Village street fair with hundreds of vendors. But it became increasingly difficult to accommodate tens of thousands of marchers spilling into the Village's narrow streets and lingering for the fair.

Heritage of Pride applied for a permit to hold this year's Pridefest on Saturday on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, a neighborhood known for its gay-oriented businesses. City officials said there was a freeze on new street fair applications.

''We understand there's a moratorium on new events,'' Spafford said. ''This isn't a new event.''

Rather than keep the festival in the Village, organizers decided not to hold it at all.

The parade starts in Midtown and proceeds down Fifth Avenue to the Village, featuring a jumble of drag queens in feather boas, marching bands, motorcycle-riding lesbians and contingents of gay police officers, law students, rugby players and samba dancers.

Contingents from more than a dozen churches and religious organizations will march near the head of the parade.

------

On the Net: www.nycpride.org

    NYC Has Reason to Celebrate Gay Pride, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gay-Pride.html

Massachusetts Gay Marriage

to Remain Legal

June 15, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, June 14 — Same-sex marriage will continue to be legal in Massachusetts, after proponents in both houses won a pitched months-long battle on Thursday to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

“In Massachusetts today, the freedom to marry is secure,” Gov. Deval Patrick said after the legislature voted 151 to 45 against the amendment, which needed 50 favorable votes to come before voters in a referendum in November 2008.

The vote means that opponents would have to start from Square 1 to sponsor a new amendment, which could not get on the ballot before 2012. Massachusetts is the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, although five states allow civil unions or the equivalent.

Thursday’s victory for same-sex marriage was not a foregone conclusion, especially after the amendment won first-round approval from the previous legislature in January, with 62 lawmakers supporting it.

As late as a couple of hours before the 1 p.m. vote on Thursday, advocates on both sides of the issue said they were not sure of the outcome. The eleventh-hour decisions of several legislators to vote against the amendment followed intensive lobbying by the leaders of the House and Senate and Governor Patrick, who, like most members of the legislature, is a Democrat.

“I think I am going to be doing a certain number of fund-raisers for districts, and I am happy to do that,” said Mr. Patrick, who said he had tried to persuade lawmakers not only that same-sex marriage should be allowed but also that a 2008 referendum would be divisive and distract from other important state issues.

About 8,500 same-sex couples have married in Massachusetts since the unions became legal in May 2004. In December 2005, opponents, led by the Massachusetts Family Institute, gathered a record 170,000 signatures for an amendment banning same-sex marriage, a measure that was supported by Mr. Patrick’s predecessor, Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who is now running for president.

Kris Mineau, president of the institute, did not indicate on Thursday whether opponents would start a new petition drive, but said, “We’re not going away.”

“We want to find out why votes switched and see what avenues are available to challenge those votes, perhaps in court,” Mr. Mineau said.

The vote reflected changes in the legislature, the election of Mr. Patrick, and lobbying by national and local gay rights groups.

“This was the focus of our national community,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Frankly, a loss today would have been very demoralizing.”

It is difficult to know how support for same-sex marriage has changed since legalization because polls taken before and after have asked different questions. The most recent Massachusetts poll, in April 2007, found that 56 percent of those surveyed would oppose the amendment.

One legislator who switched his vote was Representative Paul Kujawski, Democrat of Uxbridge, saying meetings with gay and lesbian constituents convinced him that “I couldn’t take away the happiness those people have been able to enjoy.”

Mr. Kujawski, who said he grew up in a conservative Roman Catholic neighborhood and had not understood gay relationships, said, “So many people said, ‘I didn’t ask to be gay; I was born this way.’ ”

He added, “Our job is to help people who need help, and I feel the gay side of the issue needed more help than the other side.”

Senator Gale D. Candaras, a Democrat, voted against the amendment Thursday, although she had supported it as a state representative in January. Ms. Candaras said her vote reflected constituent views in her larger, more progressive Senate district and her fear of a vicious referendum campaign.

Most moving, she said, were older constituents who had changed their views after meeting gay men and lesbians. One woman had “asked me to put it on the ballot for a vote, but since then a lovely couple moved in,” Ms. Candaras said. “She said, ‘They help me with my lawn, and if there can’t be marriage in Massachusetts, they’ll leave and they can’t help me with my lawn.”

Unlike several previous constitutional conventions on same-sex marriage with impassioned soliloquies, Thursday’s session took barely 10 minutes. Afterward, supporters of same-sex marriage, many in tears, erupted in standing ovations.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting.

    Massachusetts Gay Marriage to Remain Legal, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/us/15gay.html

Gay Groups Decry Surgeon General Nominee

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:30 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James Holsinger, has come under fire from gay rights groups for, among other things, voting to expel a lesbian pastor from the United Methodist Church and writing in 1991 that gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.

Also, Holsinger helped found a Methodist congregation that, according to gay rights activists, believes homosexuality is a matter of choice and can be ''cured.''

''He has a pretty clear bias against gays and lesbians,'' said Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, a gay rights group. ''This ideology flies in the face of current scientific medical studies. That makes me uneasy that he rejects and promotes ideology.''

Holsinger, 68, has declined all interview requests, and the White House had no immediate comment Friday.

Holsinger served as Kentucky's health secretary and chancellor of the University of Kentucky's medical center. He taught at several medical schools and spent more than three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general.

His supporters, including fellow doctors, faculty members and state officials, said he would never let his theological views affect his medical ones.

''Jim is able, as most of us are in medicine, to separate feelings that we have from our responsibility in taking care of patients,'' said Douglas Scutchfield, a professor of public health at the University of Kentucky.

In announcing Holsinger as his choice for America's top doctor May 24, Bush said the physician will focus on educating the public about childhood obesity.

The previous surgeon general was Dr. Richard Carmona, whose term was allowed to expire last summer. Carmona issued an unprecedented report condemning secondhand smoke.

Holsinger received his bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky, master's degrees from the University of South Carolina and Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctorate and medical degree from Duke University.

Scutchfield said Holsinger has advocated expanded stem cell research, in opposition to many conservatives, and also has shown political courage in this tobacco-producing state by supporting higher cigarette taxes to curb teen smoking.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher commended Holsinger for working to fight obesity and other health problems in this Appalachian state, which ranks near the bottom in many categories. ''He helped get the ball rolling and focusing on healthy lifestyles,'' Fletcher said.

As president of the Methodist Church's national Judicial Council, Holsinger voted last year to support a pastor who blocked a gay man from joining a congregation. In 2004, he voted to expel a lesbian from the clergy. The majority of the panel voted to keep the lesbian associate pastor in place, citing questions about whether she had openly declared her homosexuality, but Holsinger dissented.

Sixteen years ago, he wrote a paper for the church in which he likened the reproductive organs to male and female ''pipe fittings'' and argued that homosexuality is therefore biologically unnatural.

''When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur,'' Holsinger wrote, citing studies showing higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men and the risk of injury from anal sex.

Holsinger wrote the paper at a time when the church was one of numerous denominations considering a more open stance on allowing practicing homosexuals to join. It took that step in 1992, saying gays are of ''sacred worth'' who should be welcomed. Practicing homosexuals are still prohibited from serving in the clergy.

Gilgor, the gay rights activist, called the paper ''one twisted piece of work.''

As for the congregation Holsinger helped establish, Hope Springs Community Church, the Rev. David Calhoun told the Lexington Herald-Leader last week that the Lexington church helps some gay members to ''walk out of that lifestyle.''

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which is opposing the nomination along with the Human Rights Campaign and other local and national groups, calls such a practice ''nothing short of torture'' for gays.

Phyllis Nash, who worked under Holsinger for nine years as vice chancellor at the medical center, said the views he took in church appear at odds with his professional actions.

She recalled a women's health conference that Holsinger helped organize in 2002 that included a session on lesbian health. Despite complaints from some lawmakers, Holsinger insisted the session go forward, she said.

''His reaction in support could not have been any stronger,'' Nash said. ''He said, as health care providers, we have to be prepared to meet the health needs of anyone who walks into the door.''

    Gay Groups Decry Surgeon General Nominee, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Surgeon-General-Gays.html

Gay Youths Find Place to Call Home in Specialty Shelters

May 17, 2007
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

DETROIT — One girl said she started living on the streets after her mother beat her for dressing like a boy. Another said she ran away from home after her father pulled a gun on her for hanging around with so many “tomboys.” A third said she left home after a family acquaintance raped her because she was a lesbian and he wanted to “straighten her out.”

But gathered at Ruth’s House, a 10-bed emergency shelter for gay homeless youths here in east Detroit, they all said that for the first time they felt safe.

Ruth’s House is one of a small number of shelters for gay youths that have opened around the nation in the past four years, reflecting an increasing awareness among child welfare advocates of the disproportionately high number of gay youths in the homeless population and the special problems they face.

Five years ago, such shelters were rare, but now there are more than 25 nationwide.

Many experts estimate that while gay men and lesbians make up 3 percent to 5 percent of the general population, more than 20 percent of homeless youths under age 21 in many urban areas are gay, according to recent surveys of street youths and shelter workers published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and a study released in January by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Once on the streets, advocates and researchers said, gay youths may be avoiding group homes, shelters and the foster care system because they are afraid they will face violence and harassment.

Some gay youths have said they were beaten in full view of shelter staff members who did nothing to help. Others said they were forced to wear distinctly colored jumpsuits so they could be identified easily in the shelter population.

“What that means is that these youth are an extremely vulnerable population,” said Jamie Van Leeuwen, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado.

In an eight-city study published in The Child Welfare Journal last year, Mr. Van Leeuwen and others found that gay homeless youths were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide while living on the streets than heterosexual homeless youths. The data drew from surveys conducted in 2004 of homeless youths in Austin, Tex.; Boulder, Colo.; Chicago; Colorado Springs; Denver; Minneapolis; Salt Lake City; and St. Louis.

Circumstances are often difficult to verify, but some social workers said many gay teenagers report running away after experiencing violence at home.

Here in Detroit, Shan’nell Jordan, 18, said she ran away from home when she was 12, after a relative reacted to a rumor that she was gay by encouraging a friend to rape her. After living on the streets off and on for several years, she said, she moved into a house with two other lesbians this year and does odd jobs while looking for full-time work.

“I tried dressing like a girl for a while, but I couldn’t do it,” Ms. Jordan said.

Bryan N. Cochran, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Montana in Missoula, said there were no national studies on how often violence occurred between youths and their parents over sexuality. But Professor Cochran said his research, which was based on interviews with homeless service providers and runaway youths, showed that gay homeless youths in Seattle “were almost twice as likely to have ended up on the streets due to physical abuse in the home than were their straight peers.”

Gay advocacy groups have urged Congress to provide more money for services for gay and lesbian homeless youths. Federal financing for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, which is up for reauthorization next year, dropped, to $103.9 million in fiscal year 2006 from $105.4 million in 2003.

But homeless and youth advocacy groups fear that by pressing for money specifically for gay youths, lobbying will become splintered, and the effort could invite a backlash from antigay factions that would result in less money for homeless youth programs generally. There are 1.6 million homeless youths nationally, a 2002 federal estimate said.

“The center is the only place where I feel safe being me,” said Sarah Strickland, 18, referring to Ruth’s House. “Out there, I knew I wasn’t safe. I knew I might be killed by someone realizing that I’m a girl looking like a boy.”

Grace A. McClelland, who runs Ruth’s House, said it had a three-month waiting list for its 10-bed shelter, which opened in August. The shelter is named after Ruth Ellis, an African-American lesbian who in the 1930s opened her house in the same neighborhood to gay African-American teenagers. With a staff of seven, it provides school placement, psychological and family counseling and job training. The shelter is financed with private and federal money.

The capacity of gay youth shelters is limited, said Gerald P. Mallon, a professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work, who has helped open several shelters. In San Francisco, there are about 15 beds to serve a homeless gay youth population that local advocates estimate is in the thousands, Professor Mallon said. In New York City, there are no more than 50 beds for gay homeless youths, he added.

In Cleveland, Mika Major is the director of the Metro Youth Outreach Drop-In Center, one of about 150 centers nationally where homeless gay youths can receive counseling and other services. “The hardest part of the job is telling kids who show up with bruises or horrific stories that we don’t have a safe place to send them,” Ms. Major said.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said gay youths’ fears about shelters were valid.

“Shelter staff often have the least training and the least oversight, compared to schools or anywhere else” serving gay youths, Mr. Foreman said.

Dilo Cintron, 25, who said he lived on the streets for five years in New York starting in 2000, described being gay in a homeless shelter, saying, “You’re lucky if all they do is sneer in these places.”

Mr. Cintron said he chose the streets after being beaten nearly unconscious in a shelter by four men. Instead of intervening in the attack, he said, staff members closed the doors.

Now living in Queens, Mr. Cintron is taking job-training classes and is a volunteer at Sylvia’s Place, a shelter for homeless gay youths in Manhattan.

At a shelter in Saline, Mich., near Ann Arbor, staff members removed the door to a gay youth’s bedroom, to prevent homosexual behavior. The second bed in the room was left empty, and other residents were warned that if they misbehaved they would have to share the room with the “gay kids,” said Krista Girty, a former social worker at the shelter.

At a youth group home in Bedford, Mich., gay teenagers were identified by orange jumpsuits. “It was basically their way to shame people into being antigay,” said Andy Wilt, 20, who stayed at the shelter for six months in 2000.

In Ann Arbor, Mary Jo Callan runs the Ozone House, a shelter that serves mostly homeless heterosexual youths but aims to be hospitable to all. Ms. Callan said suburban and rural communities often lacked the money and the political will to open centers that focus on gay youths.

“I think we have to improve the facilities that we have now,” Ms. Callan said. “Otherwise, I think the kids simply won’t come in from the cold and get the help they need.”

    Gay Youths Find Place to Call Home in Specialty Shelters, NYT, 17.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/17homeless.html

170 New Yorkers' Gay Marriages Upheld

May 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:01 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- The marriages of more than 170 gay couples from New York who wed in Massachusetts before last July are valid because New York had not yet explicitly banned same-sex marriages, a Massachusetts judge ruled.

Couples are barred from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriages would be prohibited in their home states. The New York Court of Appeals ruled against same-sex marriages on July 6, 2006.

The Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders had asked for clarification of the status of New York couples who married in Massachusetts before that ruling. Massachusetts became the first state in the country to allow gay marriage in May 2004.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly ruled last week that those early marriages are legally valid.

Although the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said in March 2006 that gay couples from states with no ''express prohibition'' of same-sex marriage could marry in Massachusetts, it was unclear at that time whether gay marriage was specifically banned in New York and Rhode Island.

Connolly ruled in September that gay couples from Rhode Island have the right to marry in Massachusetts because laws in their state do not expressly prohibit same-sex marriage.

    170 New Yorkers' Gay Marriages Upheld, NYT, 16.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gay-Marriage.html

Connecticut's top court hears gay marriage case

Tue May 15, 2007
12:56AM EDT
Reuters
By Av Harris

HARTFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - Eight gay and lesbian couples urged Connecticut's highest court on Monday to follow Massachusetts and legalize same-sex marriage, saying the state is violating their fundamental rights.

"Depriving same-sex couples of the word marriage is a way of depriving them of equality as couples and families," said Bennett Klein, an attorney at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which represents the couples and successfully sued for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2003.

Connecticut is one of three U.S. states allowing same-sex civil unions that grant nearly the same rights as marriage. It was the first state to authorize gay civil unions through a legislative act without a court order.

The eight couples sued the state in August 2004 after they were denied marriage licenses. Superior Court Judge Patty Jenkins Pittman dismissed the case in March 2006, saying the couples received equal rights when Connecticut legalized same-sex civil unions in 2005.

The case follows a string of setbacks for gay marriage advocates last year in state courts in New York, Nebraska, Washington and Georgia.

Supporters of the Connecticut couples say they are optimistic because the case is the first in a state which already allows same-sex civil unions. Such unions offer state-level rights and protections but not federal benefits.

"Marriage is not just a bundle of legal rights," Klein told the hearing. "It is a status that the state confers on people, and it's a status that has with it profound personal meaning to individuals."

The eight Connecticut couples have been together between 9 and 31 years. Combined, they are raising a total 14 children, according to court documents.

State attorney Jane Rosenberg argued the enactment of civil unions means there are no legal rights denied to gay and lesbian couples.

"We're talking about a word here," Rosenberg said.

"It was rational for the legislature to preserve the opposite sex definition of marriage, which has existed throughout history and which continues to represent the common understanding of marriage in most other countries and states in our union."

The state's Supreme Court may issue its decision by November, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Similar cases are pending in California, Iowa and Maryland. Twenty-six states have constitutional amendments barring gay marriage, while 19 other states, including Connecticut, have statutes limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

Same-sex marriage has been a divisive political issue since 2003, when Massachusetts' highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, leading to the country's first same-sex marriages in May 2004.

Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey allow civil unions. California, Maine, the District of Columbia and Hawaii offer gay couples some legal rights as partners.

    Connecticut's top court hears gay marriage case, R, 15.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1432574520070515

Conn.'s Civil Unions Law Faces Challenge

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut's civil unions law, the first in the nation passed without court intervention, faces a stern test in the state Supreme Court on Monday.

Eight gay and lesbian couples say the state's refusal to grant marriage licenses violates their constitutional rights and denies them the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage.

Anne Stanback, president of the group Love Makes a Family, and a handful of gay marriage supporters, were among the first to arrive at the Supreme Court on Monday morning.

''We got here early because we wanted to make sure we were part of the history,'' Stanback said.

She and her partner of 23 years have not had a civil union because they are waiting for full marriage rights.

A ruling in their favor could have nationwide implications for states that have adopted or are considering civil union-like legislation. Connecticut in 2005 passed a civil unions law, which state officials say gives same-sex couples the equality they seek.

Currently, only Massachusetts allows same-sex couples to marry. Connecticut, Vermont, California, New Jersey, Maine and Washington have laws allowing either civil unions or domestic partnerships. Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples and cohabiting heterosexual pairs.

The Connecticut couples, who have been together between 10 and 32 years, say civil unions are inferior to marriage and violate their rights to equal protection and due process.

Married couples have federal rights related to taxes, Social Security beneficiary rules, veterans' benefits and other laws that people in civil unions don't have.

Because civil unions aren't recognized nationwide, other rights, such as the ability to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, disappear when couples cross state lines.

The Connecticut couples' claim was dismissed by a lower court last year when a judge said they received the equality they sought when Connecticut passed a same-sex civil unions law. The couples appealed.

The state Department of Public Health and the Madison town clerk's office were named as defendants in the case after denying marriage licenses to the couples based on state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's advice.

''Our basic argument is, the trial court correctly recognized that there is a rational basis for the state to use a different name for the same rights and benefits accorded same-sex couples,'' Blumenthal said. ''The rights and benefits are identical, whether the union is called a civil union or a marriage.''

A bill is pending in Connecticut's legislature to approve same-sex marriage, but leaders of the Judiciary Committee say they want to pull it from consideration this session because they do not believe enough lawmakers would vote to approve it.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who signed the civil unions bill into law in 2005, has said she would veto a gay marriage bill. Rell has said she believes marriage is between one man and one woman.

Connecticut's Supreme Court will not rule immediately Monday after the arguments are presented. It is not expected to announce its decision until later this year.

A similar case is pending before California's high court.

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford contributed to this report.

    Conn.'s Civil Unions Law Faces Challenge, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gay-Marriage.html

Lawsuit Over Brokeback Mountain in Class

May 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:21 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CHICAGO (AP) -- A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film ''Brokeback Mountain'' in class.

The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her 8th grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year.

The film, which won three Oscars, depicts two cowboys who conceal their homosexual affair.

Turner and her grandparents, Kenneth and LaVerne Richardson, are seeking around $500,000 in damages.

''It is very important to me that my children not be exposed to this,'' said Kenneth Richardson, Turner's guardian. ''The teacher knew she was not supposed to do this.''

According to the lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, the video was shown without permission from the students' parents and guardians.

The lawsuit also names Ashburn Principal Jewel Diaz and a substitute teacher, referred to as ''Ms. Buford.''

The substitute asked a student to shut the classroom door at the West Side school, saying: ''What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class,'' according to the lawsuit.

Richardson said his granddaughter was traumatized by the movie and had to undergo psychological treatment and counseling.

In 2005, Richardson complained to school administrators about reading material that he said included curse words.

''This was the last straw,'' he said. ''I feel the lawsuit was necessary because of the warning I had already given them on the literature they were giving out to children to read. I told them it was against our faith.''

Messages left over the weekend with CPS officials were not immediately returned.

    Lawsuit Over Brokeback Mountain in Class, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Brokeback-Lawsuit.html

Couples Enter New Terrain in Push for Gay Marriage in Connecticut

May 13, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

HARTFORD, May 11 — When the Connecticut legislature approved civil unions three years ago, gay rights advocates viewed it as only a half-victory, a kind of pit stop in their quest for same-sex marriage.

On Monday, lawyers representing eight same-sex couples will take up the second half of the fight in oral arguments before the Connecticut Supreme Court, where they will tell the judges that civil unions essentially create a “separate and unequal” status for gay men and lesbians.

With civil unions now legal in a handful of states and gay marriage permitted in Massachusetts, advocates and scholars on both sides of the debate are watching the case closely to see how judges navigate the new legal terrain.

Last July, a Superior Court judge ruled against the plaintiffs, saying that the state’s civil unions already gave same-sex couples the rights and protections of marriage. The couples are being represented by the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the same group that successfully sued for marriage in Massachusetts.

But Bennett Klein, one of the lawyers leading the plaintiffs’ case, said the civil union law made the argument for marriage “more powerful and compelling.”

“A law that says every right, every benefit and every legal aspect of marriage is given to same-sex couples shows that this is nothing more than a legislative policy decision of a special legal institution,” Mr. Klein said. “The legislature already determined a fundamental sameness between couples. Constitutional law has discarded long ago any notion that a separate institution for a minority can ever be equal.”

Opponents of gay marriage, who generally opposed the civil union law in 2004, also say that the outcome of the court case will bring clarity to the question of whether the state has the authority to define marriage.

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, which opposes gay marriage, said the case was likely to turn same-sex unions into a “black and white, either-or” issue.

“That is a striking and unfortunate consequence of a compromise,” Ms. Gallagher said, adding that she did not necessarily oppose civil unions. “That means that every debate will come down to the question of all or nothing; that either you think there is no difference for gay couples or you are a bigot.”

Indeed, gay rights advocates have long debated whether they should push for marriage or accept civil unions as a viable alternative. In Connecticut, Love Makes a Family, a gay rights lobbying group, ultimately decided to endorse the civil union legislation even as it pledged to push for marriage in both the court and the legislature.

While Vermont was the first state to approve civil unions, in 2000, Connecticut was the first to do so without any pressure from the court. In New Jersey, the State Supreme Court ordered the Legislature to approve some form of same-sex measure; it approved civil unions last year. Last month, the New Hampshire legislature voted for civil unions, and the governor has said he will sign the bill.

A Connecticut civil union confers virtually the same rights under state law as heterosexual marriage, including equal treatment on state income tax returns and in estates. Like other states, Connecticut cannot give same-sex couples federal rights like Social Security and veterans benefits for surviving spouses.

There have been some concerns about companies’ and health insurers’ unfamiliarity with how to handle civil unions and about civil partners being denied the same benefits as married spouses. But the plaintiffs’ central argument is that a separate name for homosexual couples is unequal.

Only Massachusetts has same-sex marriage. Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed it in New York, though he faces opposition in the Republican-led Senate.

Last month the Connecticut General Assembly’s judiciary committee approved same-sex marriage legislation by a vote of 27 to 15, a larger margin than was expected by even the most optimistic advocates. But there was doubt about whether the measure would win the 76 votes it needed in the House. On Friday, legislative leaders announced that the bill would not come up for a vote on the floor this year, saying that a number of lawmakers wanted more time to consider it.

“We are disappointed that after coming so far, we did not quite have the votes we needed to advance the bill this session,” said Anne Stanback, the executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Love Makes a Family. But she views same-sex marriage almost as an inevitability, whether it comes from the court or from the legislature. “Ultimately, we will take our equality any way we can get it.”

Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, has said that she would veto same-sex marriage legislation. In 2004, she persuaded legislators to add an amendment that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

In Connecticut, where social liberalism is often in an odd dance with blue-blood tradition, polls have often showed a slight majority in favor of same-sex marriage. A poll by the University of Connecticut and The Hartford Courant last month showed 49 percent in favor of same-sex marriage and 46 percent opposing it, within the poll’s 4.4 point margin of error. The same poll showed 62 percent supporting civil unions.

Among the eight couples named in the lawsuit, there is an even divide between those who decided to press ahead with civil unions while the case proceeded through the courts and those who opted to wait for marriage.

John Anderson and Garrett Stack, retired teachers from Woodbridge who have been together for more than 25 years, said waiting for marriage would have been silly, as though they were playing Russian roulette with their lives.

“We are men of a certain age,” said Mr. Stack, 64. “When you realize that most of your life is behind you, you want to make sure that one of you is taken care of.”

Mr. Anderson, 60, said that although he felt like a “second-class citizen” he was also grateful for the first step.

“We are no longer in the back of the bus, but we can’t quite sit in the front of the bus,” he said.

But J. E. Martin and her partner, Denise Howard, decided that waiting for marriage was a matter of principle.

“We want all the trappings that go with the word,” said Ms. Martin, who is raising two children with Ms. Howard in Stratford. “When you walk in some place and say that you are married, that means something. What would we say, that we are civilized? Unionized? It just doesn’t have the same ring.”

Both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage recognize the importance of words in the debate.

William B. Rubenstein, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of “Sexual Orientation and the Law,” said the “symbolic naming” is hard to dismiss.

“In a way, it seems that this is both a harder and easier lawsuit than what has existed elsewhere,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “It is not looking to rework a whole entire system. All that is being asked to change is very minimal, and so you are fighting over wording. But wording has held up legal battles for a long time.”

    Couples Enter New Terrain in Push for Gay Marriage in Connecticut, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/nyregion/13gay.html

Gay N.H. Bishop to Make Union Official

April 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:34 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop and his partner want to be among the first gay couples in New Hampshire united under a soon-to-be-signed civil unions law.

New Hampshire is set to become the nation's fourth state to offer civil unions for gay couples after legislation approved by the state Senate on Thursday was sent to Gov. John Lynch, who has said he would sign it.

''My partner and I look forward to taking full advantage of the new law,'' the Rev. V. Gene Robinson told The Associated Press.

Robinson, 59, was elected the ninth Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire four years ago, making him the church's first openly gay bishop. His elevation divided the Anglican community.

Robinson's partner of 18 years, Mark Andrew, 53, is a state health care administrator. They live in Weare, a small town west of Concord.

Robinson said his long journey to where he is today began as a boy in Kentucky when he found he was not attracted to women. As an adult, he spent two years in therapy seeking a ''cure'' for his homosexual urges.

He told his girlfriend, Isabella, about his sexual struggles, but they married anyway in 1972, moving to rural New Hampshire and having two daughters. Robinson eventually realized he would not change and the two divorced.

''The hardest thing is coming out to yourself. You've internalized the same homophobia as the rest of the culture,'' he said in an interview four years ago.

Soon after the divorce, Robinson met Andrew who was then working for the Peace Corps in Washington. A year and a half later, the two settled in Weare, where Andrew began accompanying Robinson to his daughters' after-school activities.

In 1988, Robinson became assistant to New Hampshire Bishop Douglas Theuner. He lost elections for bishop in Newark, N.J., in 1998 and in Rochester, N.Y., in 1999.

Robinson said he feared for his job when he first told Theuner he was gay. But when he decided to seek elevation to bishop, he did not waver in the face of calls for him to back away.

''God and I have been about this for quite a while now and I would be really surprised if God were to want me to stop now,'' Robinson said in response to one such call.

To many, Robinson has become a symbol of progress. He was welcomed two years ago at New York's gay pride parade by marchers and spectators who reached out to touch his hand, cheered, cried and thanked him.

Robinson has said before that he would marry Andrew if he could.

''I think this moves us one step closer to the American promise to all its citizens of equality under the law,'' he said. ''New Hampshire understands fairness and has acted on that value,''

But Robinson said more needs to be done. In particular, he said gay couples should have full civil legal rights under federal law.

''I don't think it will happen until we get several more states,'' he said. ''It doesn't have to be a majority, but it has to be a significant number embracing full marriage rights until we can expect that at the federal level.''

Robinson predicted gays would have full equality in 20 years, and he attributed the gains to gays being open about their homosexuality.

''Fifteen to 20 years ago, most Americans would have told you and been reasonably honest that they did not know a gay or lesbian. Now, there's not a family left, or a co-worker, that doesn't know someone,'' he said.

    Gay N.H. Bishop to Make Union Official, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Civil-Unions-Robinson.html

New Hampshire lawmakers

approve gay civil unions

Fri Apr 27, 2007
2:53AM EDT
Reuters
By Brian Early

CONCORD, New Hampshire (Reuters) - New Hampshire lawmakers authorized same-sex civil unions on Thursday, in a bill that will complete New England's transformation into a unique U.S. region where gay and lesbian couples have some form of legal recognition and conjugal rights.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 14-10 along party lines to give gays and lesbians nearly the same rights as married couples. The bill sailed through the House of Representatives on April 4, and Democratic Gov. John Lynch said last week he would sign it.

New Hampshire, known for its official motto "Live Free or Die," will become the fourth U.S. state to allow same-sex civil unions when the law takes effect on Jan 1. The law marks a shift in the state's traditionally conservative politics.

New Hampshire outlawed same-sex marriages in 1987. In 2004, in response to neighboring Massachusetts' top court allowing gay couples to marry, the state passed a law that would not recognize gay marriages from out of state.

But last year's elections signaled important political change. Democrats gained majorities in the legislature for the first time since 1874, in a state that was long a stronghold of moderate Republicans amid the liberal bastion of New England.

"We will be perceived as a free, open and tolerant society," said Janice Crawford, executive director of the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce, which already produces tour guides denoting gay-friendly New Hampshire inns.

The bill brings the divisive debate over gay rights into the state that traditionally holds the first primary in the presidential nominating process. Opponents of the legislation said they hoped it would be blocked in court.

NEW ENGLAND LAWS

"I hope a lawsuit comes quickly so this will go away," said Sen. Bob Letourneau, a Republican. "This bill weakens marriage laws. Please don't tell me otherwise. It's a sad day for the state of New Hampshire."

Elsewhere in New England, Vermont and Connecticut recognize same-sex civil unions, which provide equal rights for gay couples in committed relationships but lack the full legal protection of marriage, and Maine offers gay couples some legal rights as partners.

Rhode Island's attorney general said in February the state will recognize any marriage performed in another state -- effectively recognizing the marriage of same-sex couples who are wed in neighboring Massachusetts.

New Hampshire will be first state to introduce same-sex civil unions without pressure from a court, but some locals said they expected the law to eventually end up in court.

"I don't have much faith it will not be reversed," said Tom Lavoie, 45, a realtor who is gay and likes the idea of gaining access to better health benefits through civil unions.

Sue McCoo, 54, of Concord added: It's a good thing because it's the right thing. ... It's not going to ruin any marriages."

Massachusetts is the only state where gay marriage is legal. In December, New Jersey became the third U.S. state to provide for gay civil unions. California, the District of Columbia and Hawaii each offer gay couples some legal rights as partners.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York praised state lawmakers for the bill.

New Hampshire lawmakers approve gay civil unions, R, 27.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2648255520070427

Editorial

Mr. Spitzer and Gay Marriage

April 24, 2007
The New York Times

The news that Gov. Eliot Spitzer will soon introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage — what he calls “a simple moral imperative” — is welcome and could give new national momentum to this important cause. Mr. Spitzer would be the first governor in the nation to introduce a gay marriage bill. But if he is going to make a real difference, rather than simply checking off a box to fulfill a campaign promise, he will have to fight for the law vigorously.

Even in a progressive state like New York, this will be a steep political climb. So far, only Massachusetts has enacted a gay marriage law — after its highest court held that gay couples had a right under the State Constitution — and while there is a similar bill working its way through the Connecticut legislature, its prospects are uncertain. Civil unions or domestic partnerships involving same-sex couples are now recognized by a small but growing number of states, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, California, Hawaii and Maine. It is an indication of how big a challenge Mr. Spitzer faces that New York is not, and hasn’t come close to being, on this list.

Mr. Spitzer is right to be fighting for gay marriage. Civil unions and domestic partnerships are an important recognition of gay relationships by a state. But they still represent separate and unequal treatment. One federal study identified more than 1,100 rights or benefits that are accorded only to the legally married. That means that even in states recognizing civil unions and domestic partnerships, gay couples often have to use legal contortions to protect their families in ways that married couples take for granted. Gay couples may also be discriminated against when it comes to taxes and pension benefits.

The next step in building momentum for gay marriage in New York will be to get the State Assembly, which has a Democratic majority, on board. Speaker Sheldon Silver has said he will not take a stand until he talks with his fellow Democrats. But most of those Democrats have already publicly expressed support for gay marriage, so Mr. Silver has no excuse to delay. He should make it clear that he will join Governor Spitzer and press for the legislation’s swift passage.

The biggest stumbling block is likely to be, as it always is for gay rights measures in New York, the State Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. The majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has made it clear that he is against same-sex marriage, but he is also a pragmatist whose views on these issues have evolved and become more humane over the years.

Religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, are likely to be the bill’s most outspoken opponents. It should be clear that these religious institutions have the right to refuse to marry anyone within their own religious houses. But they should not be allowed to dictate who can and cannot be married by the state.

Mr. Spitzer did not make gay marriage a priority in his first 100 days in office, and he did not mention it in his State of the State address or, more recently, when he laid out his agenda for the remainder of the legislative session. That may simply have been a pragmatic assessment that the bill would not pass right away.

Now that he is ready to move, we are eager to hear him speak out more on this issue. There will be nothing easy about championing this simple moral imperative. But it is a fight well worth the governor’s full efforts.

    Mr. Spitzer and Gay Marriage, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/opinion/24tue1.html

N.H. Governor Backs Civil Unions

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Gov. John Lynch said Thursday he will sign legislation establishing civil unions for gay couples in New Hampshire.

''I believe it is a matter of conscience, fairness and preventing discrimination,'' Lynch told The Associated Press.

New Hampshire would become the fourth state to adopt civil unions, following Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey. Massachusetts established gay marriage.

Lynch had previously declined to take a public position on civil unions, though has supported expanding health benefits to same-sex partners of state workers. He came under fire from both sides for not weighing in -- especially after a delay last week of the Senate vote on the House-passed bill.

The Senate votes next week, and Lynch said he is confident the legislation will pass. It would authorize civil unions beginning next year.

Fergus Cullen, the state Republican Party chairman, wasn't happy with the Democratic governor's decision.

''The Democrats are going too far, too fast, and Governor Lynch is going along with them,'' Cullen said. ''These are not the actions of a moderate governor.

Democratic state Rep. Bette Lasky disagreed.

''It's never going too far when you give people their rights,'' she said, ''and I honestly believe that the majority of people in this state want to do just that and do not want to discriminate.''

    N.H. Governor Backs Civil Unions, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-NH-Civil-Unions.html

Gay Rights Bills Pass Oregon House

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- Same-sex couples would receive the same benefits as married couples, and gays and lesbians would be protected against discrimination under bills approved Tuesday by the Oregon House.

The Senate is expected to pass the two bills and Gov. Ted Kulongoski plans to sign both.

The first bill would enable same-sex couples to enter into contractual relationships that grant them the same benefits offered to married couples under state law. The bill refers to the relationships as ''domestic partnerships.''

Oregon would join Vermont, Connecticut, California and New Jersey in offering civil unions or domestic partnerships to same-sex couples. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry. Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples, along with cohabitating heterosexual pairs. The Washington Legislature last week approved a limited domestic partnership bill that's expected to be signed into law soon.

A national gay rights group called the Oregon vote part of a larger movement by state lawmakers to provide recognition for gay and lesbian couples.

''The country seems to be taking a fresh look at this issue,'' said Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry.

An opponent of the bill, state Rep. Dennis Richardson, said a fairer approach would be to allow a more limited range of marriage-style benefits to two people who live together.

''This bill is in fact marriage by another name,'' Richardson said.

The other bill that passed Tuesday would ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in employment, housing and access to public accommodations. If it passes, Oregon would become one of 18 states with laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.

    Gay Rights Bills Pass Oregon House, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Oregon-Gay-Rights.html

Parenting

Accepting Gay Identity, and Gaining Strength

April 1, 2007
By MICHAEL WINERIP
MADISON, Conn.
The New York Times

ONE month before Zach O’Connor, a seventh grader at Brown Middle School here, came out about being gay, he was in such turmoil that he stood up in homeroom and, in a voice everyone could hear, asked a girl out on a date. It was Valentine’s Day 2003, and Zach was 13.

“I was doing this to survive,” he says. “This is what other guys were doing, getting girlfriends. I should get one, too.”

He feared his parents knew the truth about him. He knew that his father had typed in a Google search starting with “g,” and several other recent “g” searches had popped up, including “gay.”

“They asked me, ‘Do you know what being gay is?’ ” he recalls. “They tried to explain there’s nothing wrong with it. I put my hands over my ears. I yelled: ‘I don’t want to hear it! I’m not, I’m not gay!’ ”

Cindy and Dan O’Connor were very worried about Zach. Though bright, he was doing poorly at school. At home, he would pick fights, slam doors, explode for no reason. They wondered how their two children could be so different; Matt, a year and a half younger, was easygoing and happy. Zach was miserable.

The O’Connors had hunches. Mr. O’Connor is a director of business development for American Express, Ms. O’Connor a senior vice president of a bank, and they have had gay colleagues, gay bosses, classmates who came out after college. From the time Zach was little, they knew he was not a run-of-the-mill boy. His friends were girls or timid boys.

“Zach had no interest in throwing a football,” Mr. O’Connor says. But their real worry was his anger, his unhappiness, his low self-esteem. “He’d say: ‘I’m not smart. I’m not like other kids,’ ” says Ms. O’Connor. The middle-school psychologist started seeing him daily.

The misery Zach caused was minor compared with the misery he felt. He says he knew he was different by kindergarten, but he had no name for it, so he would stay to himself. He tried sports, but, he says, “It didn’t work out well.” He couldn’t remember the rules. In fifth grade, when boys at recess were talking about girls they had crushes on, Zach did not have someone to name.

By sixth grade, he knew what “gay” meant, but didn’t associate it with himself. That year, he says: “I had a crush on one particular eighth-grade boy, a very straight jock. I knew whatever I was feeling I shouldn’t talk about it.” He considered himself a broken version of a human being. “I did think about suicide,” he says.

Then, for reasons he can’t wholly explain beyond pure desperation, a month after his Valentine “date” — “We never actually went out, just walked around school together” — in the midst of math class, he told a female friend. By day’s end it was all over school. The psychologist called him in. “I burst into tears,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ Every piece of depression came pouring out. It was such a mess.”

That night, when his mother got home from work, she stuck her head in his room to say hi. “I said, ‘Ma, I need to talk to you about something, I’m gay.’ She said, ‘O.K., anything else?’ ‘No, but I just told you I’m gay.’ ‘O.K., that’s fine, we still love you.’ I said, ‘That’s it?’ I was preparing for this really dramatic moment.”

Ms. O’Connor recalls, “He said, ‘Mom, aren’t you going to freak out?’ I said: ‘It’s up to you to decide who to love. I have your father, and you have to figure out what’s best for you.’ He said, ‘Don’t tell Dad.’ ”

“Of course I told him,” Ms. O’Connor says.

“With all our faults,” Mr. O’Connor says, “we’re in this together.”

Having a son come out so young was a lot of work for the parents. They found him a therapist who is gay 20 miles away in New Haven. The therapist helped them find a gay youth group, OutSpoken, a 50-minute drive away in Norwalk.

Dan Woog, a writer and longtime soccer coach at Staples High in Westport, helped found OutSpoken in 1993. He says for the first 10 years, the typical member was 17 to 22 years old. “They’d come in saying: ‘I’m gay. My life is over,’ ” Mr. Woog says. “One literally hyperventilated walking through the door.”

But in recent years, he says, the kids are 14 to 17 and more confident. “They say: ‘Hi, I’m gay. How do I meet people?’ ”

For the first 10 years, Mr. Woog never saw a parent; meetings were from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, so members could get out of the house without arousing suspicion. Now, he says, parents often bring the child to the first meeting.

He believes teenagers are coming out sooner because the Internet makes them feel less isolated and they’re seeing positive role models in the media. Indeed, Zach says he spent his first therapy session talking about the gay characters on the TV show “Will and Grace” as a way to test the therapist’s attitudes before talking about himself.

Still, seventh grade was not easy. “We heard kids across the street yelling ‘homo’ as he waited for the school bus,” Mr. O’Connor says. Zach says classmates tossed pencils at him and constantly mocked him. “One kid followed me class to class calling me ‘faggot,’ ” he says. “After a month I turned and punched him in the face. He got quiet and walked away. I said, ‘You got beat up by a faggot.’ ”

The O’Connors say middle-school officials were terrific, and by eighth grade the tide turned. Zach was let out 15 minutes early and walked across the football field to Daniel Hand High School to attend the gay-straight club. Knowing who he was, he could envision a future and felt a sense of purpose. His grades went up. He had friends. For an assignment about heroes, a girl in his class wrote about him, and Zach used her paper to come out to his Aunt Kathy.

He still wasn’t athletic, but to the family’s surprise, coming out let out a beautiful voice. He won the middle school’s top vocal award.

His father took him to a gay-lesbian conference at Central Connecticut State in New Britain, and Zach was thrilled to see so many gay people in one place. His therapist took him to a Gay Bingo Night at St. Paul’s Church on the Green in Norwalk that raises money for AIDS care. Zach became a regular and within a few months was named Miss Congeniality.

“They crowned me with a tiara and sash, and I walked around the room waving,” he recalls. “I was still this shy 14-year-old in braces. I hadn’t reached my socialness yet, and everyone was cheering.

“I was the future. Most of the men were middle-aged or older, and to see this 14-year-old out, they loved it. They were so happy.”

Now, as a 17-year-old 11th grader, Zach has passed through phases that many gay men of previous generations didn’t get to until their 20s, 30s, even 40s. “Eighth grade was kind of his militant time,” Mr. O’Connor says.

“Everything was a rainbow,” says Ms. O’Connor.

These days, Zach is so busy, he rarely has time for the gay-straight club. He’s in several singing and drama groups and is taking an SAT prep course.

“I’ve been out so long, I don’t really need the club as a resource,” he says. “I’m not going to say I’m popular, but I’m friendly with nearly everybody. Sophomore year, my social life skyrocketed.”

In music groups he made male friends for the first time. “They weren’t afraid of me,” he says. “They like me.”

His brother, Matt, says sometimes kids come up to him and ask what it’s like to have a gay brother. “I say it’s normal to me, I don’t think of it anymore.”

As for his parents, they’re happy that Zach’s happy.

“Coming out was the best thing for him,” Ms. O’Connor says. “We ask him, ‘Why didn’t you come out in fifth grade?’ ”

    Accepting Gay Identity, and Gaining Strength, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/01RParenting.html?hp

Last Hurrah for a Gay Playground

March 12, 2007
The New York Times
By ERIC KONIGSBERG

At five minutes before 10 on Saturday night, the Roxy’s manager, Jason McCarthy, lined up the folks who staff the discothèque’s massive front bar. “O.K., everybody, remember what I told you,” he said. “Smile a lot. Hug people a lot. Tell them how important the gay community has been to this place. O.K.?”

The Roxy, on 18th Street near the West Side Highway, was about to open for its last night. Since 1991, this warhorse of a club, which operates during the week as a roller-skating rink, has made its name as a gay dance hall on Saturday nights. But last month, the word went out that the Roxy would be shutting its doors for good after a final bash on March 10. The building’s owner has plans to sell it to developers.

“The end of an era,” read the copy on a stack of promotional cards that sat on a column near the Roxy’s 6,000-square-foot dance floor. The card listed a few employment statistics — “53 disc jockeys”; “781 go-go boys” — in addition to the four “live music icons” (Madonna, Cher, Bette Midler and Beyoncé) who were known to turn up nominally unannounced every now and then and perform a short set.

But the Roxy’s significance, said people from both sides of the velvet rope, has less to do with such performances than with the droves of gay men who cycled through its gates weekend after weekend.

“I’ve seen so many people come here, it’s like I watched a lot of them grow up,” said John Blair, a club promoter who has been putting on Saturday nights at the Roxy from the start.

He said on Saturday that he was expecting a full house — it holds about 2,300 people at a time — for the final night. “We’ll be letting them in in shifts, from 10 at night until 9 in the morning,” he said. “I used to always go home at 2 a.m., but tonight I’ve got to stay until 4.”

In fact, the club stayed open until noon yesterday, and all told, took in close to 4,000 people. The final D.J., Peter Rauhofer, played a remix of Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” twice.

The doors opened at 10 p.m. sharp, and a thick column of men and the odd female friend here and there advanced up the sloping entry hall, checked their coats and dispersed on the dance floor. The price of admission ranged from $10 to $40, depending on the hour and whether a patron had been issued a gold or white Roxy loyalty card.

Lines formed at the club’s three bars, and drinks — vodka cocktails and Jägermeister shots were staples, said the head bartender, Kathy Condon — were served in plastic cups. The lights dimmed, and strobes flashed along the walls. Progressive house music tracks ran together, peaking on the matched beats.

The clubgoers were in their 20s and 30s. Most had short hair or shaved heads. They wore low-slung jeans, sneakers or work boots, and faux-vintage T-shirts that bore the insignias of athletic departments that don’t exist.

“Oh, my God, I had my coming-out party here 11 years ago,” said Terrence Cairy, a reed-thin, 35-year-old jewelry designer from Melville, on Long Island. “I brought my friends and broke the news. Some friends I lost, some friends I kept.”

But, he said, “This place stayed. Oh, my God, I used to come here every weekend. One friend, I brought him here three years ago to come out. It’s a safe place to come out, and oh, my God, it has the best D.J.’s in the city.”

A good number of men on the dance floor went with a bare-chested look. This typically included barbed-wire tattoos encircling their biceps, dog tags around their necks and baseball caps with curved bills, such that a visitor unaware of the event taking place might have thought he had walked onto a set where somebody was reshooting the volleyball scene from “Top Gun.”

“The Roxy is a rite of passage for gay New Yorkers, an essential stop on any gay tourist’s agenda,” Matt Kalkhoff, a contributor to The New York Blade, wrote in 2005.

In a telephone interview, he added: “Musically, it’s been very influential. When one of the D.J.’s, Larry Tee, was working there, it was a time when you would hear records on the dance floor and then hear them on the radio six months later.”

Joe Panetta, 36, who had driven to the city from Newburgh, where he is studying for a master’s degree in education, said: “This place has molded me. The people here are doctors, lawyers, professionals. The people I met aren’t the stereotypical gay men that I used to see on TV.”

Mr. Blair said that when he started Saturday nights at the Roxy, “we were just coming out of the dark ages of AIDS, and there was a real move away from the sort of pageantry of clubs and drag queens and that whole thing where the clubs threw glitter on the people.”

He went on: “This was the emergence of the Chelsea era, and the Chelsea Boy look. Everyone worked out really hard. And they all worked on the same body parts.”

Mr. Blair, who had owned gay health clubs, explained the coding system that he and his business partners devised for the Roxy’s loyalty cards and mailing lists. “We rated everybody on a scale from 1 to 4 based on how they looked,” he said. They kept the rankings in a database, so that for certain events they could direct their invitations to a specific mix of loyal customers and trophy guests.

“We gave out very few 1s — that’s the worst-looking, or for straight people,” he said. “Then, most people got 2s; if they’re pretty, they got a 3. Four is for people we have to let in free — either they’re really hot or they’re a friend of mine or somehow important in the club community.”

He explained that 3s were actually more desirable guests than 4s. “A 3 is a cutie that pays,” he said.

    Last Hurrah for a Gay Playground, NYT, 12.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/nyregion/12roxy.html

U.S. court upholds same-sex teaching to children

Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:20AM EST
Reuters

BOSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in Boston has dismissed a suit by two families who wanted to stop a Massachusetts town and its public school system from teaching their children about gay marriage, court documents show.

The families last year filed the suit asserting that the reading of a gay-themed book and handing out to elementary school students of other children's books that discussed homosexuality without first notifying parents was a violation of their religious rights.

Federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled on Friday that public schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy."

"Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation," he said.

He said the courts had decided in other cases that parents' rights to exercise their religious beliefs were not violated when their children were exposed to contrary ideas in school.

The complaint filed against the town of Lexington, about 12 miles west of Boston, had said the school had "begun a process of intentionally indoctrinating very young children to affirm the notion that homosexuality is right and normal in direct denigration of the plaintiffs' deeply held faith."

The book that sparked the case was "King & King" which tells the story of a crown prince who rejects a bevy of beautiful princesses, rebuffing each suitor until falling in love with a prince. The two marry, sealing the union with a kiss, and live happily ever after.

The Lexington school system had said reading the book was not intended as sex education but as a way to educate children about the world in which they live, especially in Massachusetts, the only U.S. state where gays and lesbians can legally wed.

A lawyer for the families said they would appeal the ruling, the Boston Globe reported on Saturday.

    U.S. court upholds same-sex teaching to children, R, 24.2.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2434298220070224

New Episcopal Leader Braces for Gay-Rights Test

February 11, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

At a book party last week at the New York headquarters of the Episcopal Church, a line of more than 100 fans waited to have the church’s new presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, sign copies of her new book of sermons, “A Wing and a Prayer.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori, the first woman presiding bishop in the history of the Anglican Communion, appeared a bit surprised at the celebrity treatment but clearly enjoyed the sentiment.

She is about to head off to a hostile reception.

This week, Bishop Jefferts Schori will represent the Episcopal Church at a meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with the presiding bishops of the 37 other provinces in the global Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest church body. Some of those bishops, known as primates, have broken their ties with the American church after it ordained an openly gay bishop and permitted the blessing of same-sex unions.

Some primates have said they will not sit at the same table with Bishop Jefferts Schori. Some have threatened to walk out of the meeting.

In an interview in her office last week, Bishop Jefferts Schori said the conflict was more about “biblical interpretation” than about homosexuality.

“We have had gay bishops and gay clergy for millennia,” she said. “The willingness to be open about that is more recent.”

She said that what she wanted to convey to her fellow primates was that despite the highly-publicized departure of some congregations (a spokesman said 45 of 7,400 have left and affiliated with provinces overseas), the Episcopal Church has the support of most members, who are engaged in worship and mission work, and not fixated on this controversy.

“A number of the primates have perhaps inaccurate ideas about the context of this church. They hear from the voices quite loudly that this church is going to hell in a handbasket,” she said. “The folks who are unhappy represent a small percentage of the whole, but they are quite loud.”

In the global picture, however, those unhappy with the Americans are a significant bloc, and some are ready to cut off the American branch of the Anglican Communion. Conservatives were emboldened recently when an influential bishop, N. T. Wright of Durham, England, said in an interview, “Even if it means a bit of pruning, the plant will be healthier for it.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori said the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, had accommodated the conservatives because he also presides over the Church of England, where the conservatives are a more substantial presence than in the United States, and are increasingly assertive.

Bishop Jefferts Schori, who is 52, exudes a cool presence, sitting erect in a crimson shirt and white clerical collar. She uses few words to make her points. In her previous career, she was an oceanographer, specializing in squid and octopuses.

Ordained a priest only 13 years ago, she is the former bishop of Nevada, where she permitted blessings for gay couples and voted to confirm the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. She was elected presiding bishop last June, a nine-year assignment.

She said opposition came primarily from a “handful of primates,” led by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, with support from those in Uganda and Rwanda. She said they had made it appear as if the bulk of the Anglican Communion was arrayed against the Americans, when that was not the case.

“It’s abundantly clear that there’s a diversity of opinion in the provinces of the Communion” she said. Asked why they are not more vocal, she said, “I think that has to be tenderly nurtured. You don’t want to put people in a precarious situation” by encouraging them to speak out against their own primates.

One African bishop recently did so. After the House of Bishops in Tanzania voted in December to cut ties to the Episcopal Church and stop accepting its donations, Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo, who leads the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, wrote a letter saying, “The issue of homosexuality is not fundamental to the Christian faith.”

At the meeting in Tanzania, Bishop Jefferts Schori is to sit down with the primates of 13 provinces that do not ordain women as priests, not to mention as bishops. But she said her sex was not the reason some primates were preparing to shun her. The problem is that some bishops say the Episcopal Church has failed to repent or to declare a moratorium on gay blessings, steps required by a committee of officials commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2004.

She is likely to be face to face with Archbishop Akinola, who has created a rival network of conservative churches in the United States.

Bishop Jefferts Schori said that if she is rebuked at the meeting, it will not be anything new; she experienced that before as an oceanographer: “The first time I was chief scientist on a cruise, the captain wouldn’t speak to me because I was a woman.”

Asked how she would respond if primates walked out on her, she said, “Life is too short to get too flustered.”

    New Episcopal Leader Braces for Gay-Rights Test, NYT, 11.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/11bishop.html?hp&ex=1171256400&en=4cd943bae659e8a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Maine lesbian "adoptee" case tests legal bounds

Sat Feb 10, 2007 9:08AM EST
Reuters
By Sarah Mahoney

ROCKLAND, Maine (Reuters) - Olive Watson, daughter of a wealthy computer magnate, adopted her 44-year-old lesbian lover, Patricia Spado, in a Maine courtroom in 1991 to provide her partner with greater financial security.

Fast-forward 16 years. The two have split up and the Watson family is seeking to annul the adoption in a complex legal case that provides a glimpse into efforts by same-sex couples to use adoption laws to establish legal rights including inheritance.

Gay-rights advocates say it illustrates the difficulties homosexuals in the United States face in protecting the financial interest of their partners, defending the use of adoption as a last-ditch effort to provide protections otherwise unavailable to many gay and lesbian couples.

Massachusetts is the only U.S. state where gay marriage is legal. Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut recognize same-sex civil unions, giving gay and lesbian couples some of the protections of marriage including inheritance.

"The case in Maine is rare. But you do still hear of such cases," said Carrie Evans, state legislative director at gay rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.

Making the matter even more complex is money -- lots of it.

Watson, who was 43 at the time of the adoption, is the daughter of computer magnate Thomas John Watson Jr., president of IBM from 1952 to 1971 and the eldest son of the company's first president.

When Thomas Watson Jr.'s widow died in 2004, it triggered two separate trusts, reportedly worth millions, which are to be divided between the Watson grandchildren.

Spado -- as an adopted grandchild -- asked for a share of the estate. While a separate case is under way in Connecticut disputing Spado's right to inherit from those trusts, lawyers for the Watsons sought to have the adoption annulled.

Many states have restrictions that would have made this adoption impossible, including laws that prevent people in a sexual relationship from adopting, or preventing a younger person from adopting an older one.

While Maine laws on adult adoptions have since changed, in 1991 the only requirement was that both parties live in Maine.

RECUSAL REQUEST

Initially, the annulment was granted. But the Maine Supreme Judicial Court kicked it back to the lower court last month, ruling that the trust's lawyers had used the incorrect forms to notify Spado of her next legal steps.

In the latest developments, lawyers representing the lesbian "adoptee" on Wednesday asked the judge presiding over the case to recuse herself during a pretrial conference.

In order for the adoption to be annulled, the Watson trusts' lawyers must prove some form of fraud was committed -- either in Spado's statement that she lived in Maine, or that the court was somehow deceived by the adoption proceedings.

"There needed to have been an intention to establish a parent-child relationship," said Stephen Hanscom, an attorney representing the Watsons.

"And there is no indication that the court was made aware of the sexual relationship" between the two women, he said.

That means, argued Cliff Ruprecht, a lawyer representing Spado, that the judge herself -- who also presided over the 1991 adoption -- might conceivably need to be called as a witness.

The judge said she would rule on the recusal issue next week.

Some observers said annulment would be difficult.

"The bottom line is if you can dot the I's and cross the T's, you have an adoption," said Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a gay-rights group.

"And in this case, you have an adoption. There was no fraud, and there's no reason to void the adoption just because it involves a same-sex couple," she said.

She added that when gay partners are unable to marry, such blatant end-runs around the law are inevitable.

"When people want to protect their partners, as these two did at one point in their lives, they have to take pretty drastic steps to say, 'We're a family,'" Bonauto said.

    Maine lesbian "adoptee" case tests legal bounds, R, 10.2.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0725400720070210

Gay teens coming out earlier to peers and family

Updated 2/7/2007 10:38 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Marilyn Elias

Kate Haigh, 18, a high school senior in St. Paul, recalls attending her first meeting at the school's Gay-Straight Alliance club when she was in the ninth grade. "I said, 'My name is Kate, and I'm a lesbian.' It was so liberating. I felt like something huge had been lifted off my shoulders, and finally I had people to talk to."

Zach Lundin, 16, has brought boyfriends to several dances at his high school in suburban Seattle.

Vance Smith wanted to start a club to support gay students at his rural Colorado school but says administrators balked. At age 15, Vance contacted a New York advocacy group that sent school officials a letter about students' legal rights. Now 17, Smith has his club.

Gay teenagers are "coming out" earlier than ever, and many feel better about themselves than earlier generations of gays, youth leaders and researchers say. The change is happening in the wake of opinion polls that show growing acceptance of gays, more supportive adults and positive gay role models in popular media.

"In my generation, you definitely didn't come out in high school. You had to move away from home to be gay," says Kevin Jennings, 43, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a national group that promotes a positive school climate for gay children. "Now so many are out while they're still at home. They're more vocal than we were."

Still, many continue to have a tough time. The worst off, experts say, are young people in conservative rural regions and children whose parents cannot abide having gay offspring. Taunting at school is still common. Cyber-bullying is "the new big thing," says Laura Sorensen of Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center in Ferndale, Mich. "Kids are getting hate mail and taunts on MySpace or Facebook."

But as young gays become more visible targets, they also have more sources of help, experts say. In the 11 years since Jennings founded the education network, parents have become more supportive of gay teens, he says. Also, the network has trained thousands of school officials on how to reduce gay bashing.

Schools are more likely than in the past to have openly gay staff members who can help young people, says Anthony D'Augelli, an associate dean at Pennsylvania State University. In a recent national survey, one-third of school psychologists said they had counseled students or parents about sexual orientation.

In the mid-1990s, a few dozen Gay-Straight Alliance clubs were in U.S. high schools; now 3,200 are registered with the education network, Jennings says.

The Internet also has eased isolation for gay teens, offering a place for socializing and support, says Stephanie Sanders of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Bloomington, Ind.

Cultural diversity is prevalent

Teens are coming out in an era when more Americans than ever consider homosexuality acceptable. In 2006, 54% found homosexuality acceptable, compared with 38% in 1992, Gallup polls show.

Youths also swim in a cultural sea that's far more pro-gay than ever, says Ritch Savin-Williams, a psychologist at Cornell University and author of The New Gay Teenager. From MTV's The Real World to Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Oscars, "kids can see gays in a positive light," he says.

The news in December that Vice President Cheney's daughter Mary is expecting a baby with her female partner has even brought gay parenthood into the Bush administration family.

By the time parenthood becomes an option, many homosexuals have known their preferences for a long time. Gay males and lesbians often feel "different" as early as grade school, Sanders says.

Vance Smith, who grew up amid cornfields in LaSalle, Colo., recalls being made fun of and called "gay" as early as first grade. "I didn't even know what it was," he says. "I didn't know why I didn't like 'guy-type' stuff like sports or why I was always more comfortable hanging out with girls. And I didn't know why I should be punished for it." By middle school, "I always had a girlfriend, hoping people wouldn't know." But he couldn't make himself feel heterosexual, Smith says. And nobody was fooled, anyway.

Zach Lundin had been taught in church that homosexuality was wrong. "I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself I was straight," says Lundin, 17, of Kenmore, Wash. At age 14 he told his parents he was attracted to boys. "I said, 'I'm not going to lie to you anymore. This is what I'm really feeling.' "

His father, Roy Lundin, wasn't thrilled to hear the news. "Any parent who says his first reaction isn't 'Oh, no!' probably isn't telling the truth," he says.

"We felt some sadness. We just assumed we'd have a daughter-in-law someday and grandchildren. It becomes your disappointment, but it's a selfish disappointment. Now we've gotten past that.

"There are some parts of it that I'll never be comfortable with," he concedes, "but that doesn't mean I can't support Zach. I love him and I will support him."

A struggle for the parents

How parents deal with such news has a huge effect on their kids' lives, says Caitlin Ryan, a social-work researcher at San Francisco State University who is studying the families of gay young people. Families can move gradually from rejection to warm acceptance once the shock wears off, she says. Parents with strong convictions that homosexuality is always wrong find it hardest to accept their gay teens, she says.

At its most extreme, that means throwing a child out. Nobody knows exactly how many gay teens meet that fate, but a disproportionate share of homeless young people in the USA are homosexuals, a new report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says. Family conflict, including conflict over sexual orientation, is a key reason they're homeless, the report says. Several cities have shelters for gay kids, but there's less help than needed, says Carl Siciliano of the Ali Forney Center, which offers limited housing for New York youths.

Sorensen, who coordinates a drop-in program in suburban Detroit, sees teens from all kinds of families. "Kids from the suburbs drive up in new SUVs their parents bought them. But sometimes they're afraid to come out to parents because of talk against gays they've heard at home. Other kids have to scrounge together bus fare to get here. They all would like to tell their parents and be accepted, but not all of them can."

Not everyone applauds the soaring number of school-based gay/straight alliances and adult-led programs for gay teens. "Homosexuality is harmful to society, and young people have no business committing to a sexual identity until they're adults," says Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, a conservative policy group. The council backs a new Georgia law, first in the nation, that requires schools to tell parents about clubs and allows them to forbid their children to participate in gay/straight alliances.

Lobbying is underway to pass similar laws in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas, says Joe Glover of the Family Policy Network, a Christian family advocacy group. "Parents shouldn't have to check their rights at the school room door," he says.

Researchers traditionally have emphasized that gay teens have worse mental health and higher suicide rates than straight teens. But Cornell's Savin-Williams says these conclusions are primarily based on small, older studies skewed to troubled youths. A few newer studies suggest teens who are attracted to both sexes may have the worst problems. But most research has grouped them with homosexuals.

Gay kids are more likely than straight teens to think about or try suicide, but there's no evidence they're more likely to kill themselves, says sociologist Stephen Russell of the University of Arizona. He has analyzed findings from a study of 12,000 teens followed up to a decade so far. Those with same-sex attractions are more depressed and anxious, Russell says, but there's also evidence that many who say they're attracted to others of their sex grow up to be heterosexual. He says stigma and prejudice still prompt undue stress for gay kids.

Studies on gay boys predominate, so young lesbians are more of a mystery. Pioneering findings suggest lesbian teens may be different from gay boys in key ways. There's more variability in the age when they realize they're not straight, says Lisa Diamond, a University of Utah psychologist. Unlike boys, most girls also have opposite-sex attractions. And strong emotional bonds are more key in sparking girls' sexual attractions, Diamond says.

She also has ventured into territory rarely trod in studies on gay youths: friendships and romances. "They're adolescents first, and adolescents are obsessed with their friendship networks," she says.

Diamond has kids weigh in on the statement: "I sometimes worry that I'll never be able to find the kind of romantic partner I want." Gay teens worry about this more than straight teens because best friends are usually the same sex, she says. Gays are unique in agonizing over whether to turn friendships into romances, often fearing they'll lose a friend.

Worry about finding a partner was strongly linked to anxiety and depression. When Diamond subtracted this worry, gay teens were no more anxious or depressed than straight teens. "We have to start looking at their whole lives, not just sexual orientation. By focusing on stigma, we may be missing the bigger picture: that they're painfully normal teenagers."

D'Augelli, who studies homosexuality among the young, says many adults might be surprised at the secret that really lurks in the psyches of gay teens: "The remarkable fact is, most are quite conventional. They want long-term relationships. They want children."

    Gay teens coming out earlier to peers and family, UT, 7.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-07-gay-teens-cover_x.htm

Same-Sex Marriage Setback in Massachusetts

January 3, 2007
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Jan. 2 — Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, took a first step toward possibly banning it Tuesday when legislators voted to advance a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

The amendment now requires the approval of at least 50 legislators in another vote in the 2007-8 session. Then it would be placed on the November 2008 ballot as a referendum question.

If it passed, the amendment would not invalidate the more than 8,000 same-sex marriages that have taken place since they became legal in May 2004. But it would prevent future marriages of gay men and lesbians.

“This is democracy in action,” said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment. “It’s giving people the opportunity to vote on the most essential institution in human existence — marriage.”

Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, choked back tears.

“The price that our children and families will pay is so severe that we simply have to recommit ourselves to fight this some more,” she said.

The swiftness of the vote on Tuesday surprised people on both sides of the issue, taking place without any debate, just minutes after the constitutional convention had been gaveled into session. Proponents of the amendment needed just 50 of the legislature’s 200 lawmakers to support it; the final vote was 61 in favor of the amendment and 132 opposed.

Later in the day, supporters of same-sex marriage persuaded lawmakers to reconsider the amendment, but the second vote, 62 to 134, only affirmed the results of the first.

National groups on both sides of the issue said they would commit resources to help advocates wage battle here. This past Election Day, the tide had seemed to be turning slightly in favor of supporters of same-sex marriage, with the defeat of an opposition amendment in Arizona and passage of seven others by slimmer margins than similar amendments in 2004.

Just two months ago, at an earlier constitutional convention, the legislature appeared to have essentially killed the proposal to allow a vote. During that session, legislators recessed without voting on the amendment, tabling it until Jan. 2, the last day of the legislative session. Both sides said they expected that lawmakers would then vote to end the session without taking up the measure.

But last week, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, which three years ago ruled that same-sex marriage should be legal, threw a wrench into things.

The court chided lawmakers for their maneuvers to avoid a vote on the amendment, saying the legislature had demonstrated “indifference to, or defiance of, its constitutional duties.”

The court said it was not empowered to order the legislature to vote on the amendment, which petitioners, including Gov. Mitt Romney, had asked it to do. But the court’s criticism appeared to be enough to make some lawmakers, including some supporters of same-sex marriage, decide to allow a vote.

“Certainly, the court ruling changed the atmosphere this week,” said Mr. Mineau, whose organization had gathered a record 170,000 petition signatures to get the amendment before the legislature.

Ms. Isaacson said, “The S.J.C. decision really tipped the scales against us.”

Tuesday’s vote was considered a victory for Governor Romney, a Republican who has used his opposition to same-sex marriage as a conservative rallying point as he has laid the groundwork for an expected run for the presidency in 2008.

In a statement Tuesday, Mr. Romney called the marriage vote “a huge victory for the people of Massachusetts.”

By contrast, the vote was something of a rebuke to the incoming governor, Deval L. Patrick, a supporter of same-sex marriage who on Thursday will be sworn in as the first Democrat to occupy the governor’s office in 16 years. On Tuesday, before the constitutional convention, Mr. Patrick met with the House speaker and the Senate president, both Democrats, to urge them to find a way to defeat the amendment, even if it meant adjourning without voting on it.

“I believe that adults should be free to choose whom they wish to love and to marry,” Mr. Patrick said, adding that he objected to using the constitutional amendment process “to give a minority fewer freedoms than the majority.”

After the vote, Mr. Patrick said in a statement, “We have work to do over the next year to turn this around.”

The new legislature taking office this month includes more supporters of same-sex marriage. But people on both sides of the issue said it was not clear if the balance had tipped enough to sideline the amendment.

Ms. Isaacson and other gay rights activists have said that, should the initiative get on the 2008 ballot, they fear losing to an expensive campaign that would draw opponents from around the country. Polls in Massachusetts have generally found that just over half of the citizens surveyed supported same-sex marriage, but about the same number wanted the constitutional amendment to come before voters.

On Tuesday, scores of demonstrators lined the street outside the Statehouse and spilled into the building.

“I think it is going to get defeated next time around,” said Lea Roy, 38, a supporter of same-sex marriage from Fitchburg who hopes to marry her girlfriend. “It’s something you always dream about growing up — getting married. Then it’s like, I’m gay and we’re not allowed to get married.”

But David Wilson, who, along with his partner, Rob Compton, was a plaintiff in the original lawsuit that legalized same-sex marriage, was less optimistic.

“It feels like the rug has been pulled out from under us,” said Mr. Wilson, who has married Mr. Compton. “Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow, but today I feel like I’ve been shot.”

Bea Martins, 63, an opponent of same-sex marriage from Fall River, said she was “very pleased” by the vote. As the initiative winds its way through the rest of the process, Ms. Martins said, “my counsel is we continue praying to the dear Lord for justice to be done.”

Katie Zezima contributed reporting.

    Same-Sex Marriage Setback in Massachusetts, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/us/03gay.html