Florist Discriminated Against Gay Couple, Washington Supreme Court Rules

A florist who refused to sell flowers for a same-sex wedding cannot claim religious belief as a defense under the state’s anti-discrimination laws, Washington’s high court said Thursday, in a case that has been watched around the nation by religious and civil rights groups.

SEATTLE — The unanimous ruling by the nine-member state Supreme Court, which a lawyer for the florist said would be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, addressed sweeping questions about public accommodation, artistic expression and free speech.Discrimination

But at its heart was a very human story about Arlene’s Flowers in the small city of Richland, in southeast Washington, and what happened there in 2013 when Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed started planning their wedding. The shop’s owner, Barronelle Stutzman, knew that Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Freed were gay and had sold them flowers for years, but then refused to provide flowers for their wedding. Her Christian faith, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman, created a line, she said, that she could not cross.

But in affirming a lower court’s finding, the Supreme Court said flatly that it agreed with the couple — flowers were not really the point.

The case, the court said in its 59-page decision, “is no more about access to flowers than civil rights cases in the 1960s were about access to sandwiches.” And laws, the decision said, can have legitimate social goals. “Public accommodations laws do not simply guarantee access to goods or services,” it said. “Instead, they serve a broader societal purpose: eradicating barriers to the equal treatment of all citizens.”

National gay rights groups hailed the decision as another plank of protection for same-sex couples and marriage equality.

“People should also never use their personal religious beliefs as a free pass to violate the law or the basic civil rights of others,” Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights, said in a statement.

by Kirk Johnson, New York Times – February 16, 2017

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Vague anti same-sex marriage bills begin final steps through Virginia GA

Today, in a Virginia Senate General Laws committee hearing, HB 2025, authored by Del. Freitas (R- 30) by a vote of 8-7.

Before the bill was passed it was amended to match its Virginia Senate counter part, SB 1324. This senate version, submitted by Sen. Carrico, is an exact copy of a bill he submitted last year – that legislation passed the House and Senate and was vetoed by McAuliffe weeks later.

Both bills, known as a solemnization bills,  aim to shield any “person” from punishment from the state, civil or otherwise, if they deny services in a same-sex marriage. It defines a “person” as a “religious organization, organization supervised or controlled by or operated in connection with a religious organization, individual employed by a religious organization while acting in the scope of his paid or volunteer employment, successor, representative, agent, agency, or instrumentality of any of the foregoing or clergy member or minister.”adoption for gay couples

In layman’s terms, it aims to protect pastors and other faith leaders in churches from civil or criminal punishment if they deny services to same-sex couples. However the bill has also been interpreted by some activists to include other faith-based organizations like church- run schools or hospitals, giving them the ability to refuse visitation rights by same-sex couples, or deny the children of same-sex parents in parochial programs.

The bill was amended and passed without comment and the vote was along party lines with no surprises.

Sen. Carrico’s bill now heads to the House General Laws Committee where it is set to similarly be passed with little debate or issue.

Gov. McAuliffe has promised to veto this bill along with any other bill which could negatively impact LGBTQ Virginians.

by Brad Kutner, February 13, 2107

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Human Gene Editing Receives Science Panel’s Support

An influential science advisory group formed by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine on Tuesday lent its support to a once-unthinkable proposition: clinical efforts to engineer humans with inheritable genetic traits.

In a report laden with caveats and notes of caution, the group endorsed the alteration of human eggs, sperm and embryos — but only to prevent babies from being born with genes known to cause serious diseases and disability, only when no “reasonable alternative” exists, and only when a plan is in place to track the effects of the procedure through multiple generations.

Human genetic engineering for any reason has long been seen as an ethical minefield. Many scientists fear that the techniques used to prevent genetic diseases might also be used to enhance intelligence or create humans physically suited to particular tasks, like soldiers.gene editing

Just over a year ago, an international group of scientists declared that it would be “irresponsible to proceed” with making heritable changes to the human genome until the risks could be better assessed and until there was “broad societal consensus about the appropriateness” of any proposed change.

Because any genetic changes in human eggs, sperm and embryos, also called the germ line, can be passed on to future generations, the recommendation crosses a line that “many have viewed as ethically inviolable,” the report acknowledges.

But in the last year, the report’s authors said, the techniques required to perform this sort of gene editing have passed crucial milestones that have forced ethical considerations to the fore.

“Previously, it was easy for people to say, ‘This isn’t possible, so we don’t have to think about it much,’” said Richard Hynes, a cancer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was one of the leaders of the committee that wrote the new report.

“Now we can see a path whereby we might be able to do it, so we have to think about how to make sure it’s used only for the right things and not for the wrong things,” he said.

by Amy Harmon, New York Times, February 14, 2017

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Artificial insemination parenting bill draws LGBT criticism

Two Tennessee lawmakers want to do away with a 40-year-old state law granting legitimacy to children conceived through artificial insemination. Critics say the bill is aimed at gay couples and their children.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The bill would remove a single sentence applying to child custody when artificial insemination is involved, one that’s been interpreted to make no distinction between same-sex and heterosexual couples.

But opponents warn that changing the law could prevent both same-sex parents from appearing on the children’s birth certificates, affecting their ability to make parenting decisions ranging from medical care to education.

“It would affect lesbian couples in particular, because if you have two women who are married and one is the birth mother, the other one is presumed to be parent in Tennessee,” said Chris Sanders, the executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project.anonymous sperm donors

Ever since the 2015 same-sex marriage ruling, Tennessee laws with gender-specific terms have been interpreted as applying to either gender of married couples. But that would change under another Republican bill that is seeking to eliminate gender-neutral interpretations of “mother,” ”father,” ”husband,” and “wife.” 

“Clearly, the legislative intention behind both these bills is to stop lesbian couples from having the same automatic recognition of their parent-child relationships that opposite-sex couples have,” Julia Tate-Keith, a Murfreesboro attorney specializing in adoption and surrogacy issues, said in a legal memo.

State Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, the sponsor of the artificial insemination bill, in a Facebook post denied that her bill is aimed at same-sex marriage, and argued it would not de-legitimize children because another state law addresses parentage without asking about the method of conception.

“The remaining law that will now govern the situation does not have the government inquiring into the means by which the couple’s child came into existence or whose sperm, the husband’s or a donor’s, was used,” Weaver wrote in the post.

Weaver said there would be no change under her legislation for heterosexual couples. “A child born to a married woman will be considered the child of her husband,” she said in a statement.

But that part of the code refers to circumstances when “a man is rebuttably presumed to be the father of a child.” Tate-Keith said that that language does not carry the same gender-neutral interpretation as other parts of state law.

Sanders said that heterosexual couples would have to go through more legal steps if the bill becomes law.

“Straight couples will lose the presumption of paternity,” Sanders said. “It will require them to go to court.”

“What if you didn’t tell your family and friends you were getting fertility treatment?” he said. “It just creates more hardship, more hoops to jump through.”

By ERIK SCHELZIG Associated Press, February 13, 2017

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Indiana Birth certificate battle moves to 7th Circuit

Despite a change in state leadership, Indiana will continue fighting over birth certificates in a move that is being seen as part of a larger ongoing resistance to same-sex marriage.

Indiana has appealed the ruling in Henderson v. Adams, 17-1141, which allowed married non-birth mothers to be listed as a parent on the child’s birth certificate. The Pence administration refused to recognize these women as parents and twice tried to convince the district court to limit the scope of the state’s parenthood statutes.

Although a new governor has been installed, the state is turning to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals but has not yet submitted a brief stating what issue it wants the appellate panel to address. Neither Gov. Eric Holcomb nor Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill responded to phone and email messages seeking comment.gay parents adopting, same sex paretners

“I had been hopeful that with a new attorney general and a new governor we would see a change in the state’s handling of this matter,” said Karen Celestino-Horseman, one of attorneys representing the couples in Henderson.

The plaintiffs in Henderson, a group of married lesbian couples, challenged Indiana’s stance that non-birth mothers are not parents because they are not biologically related to the children. Their primary argument was that they were being treated differently from similarly situated heterosexual couples who had undergone artificial insemination. The men in those marriages were still listed as the father on the birth certificate even though they didn’t share a biological connection with the offspring.

Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana overturned the state’s parenthood statutes, finding they violate the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment.

The state subsequently filed a motion asking the court to modify and clarify the ruling. Walton Pratt denied the motion to amend the judgment but granted the state’s request to clarify how the judgment should be applied, pointing out “the Order means what it says and says what it means.”

The IndianaLawyer.com, by Marilyn Odendahl, February 8, 2017

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Boy Scouts, Reversing Century-Old Stance, Will Allow Transgender Boys

Reversing its stance of more than a century, the Boy Scouts of America said on Monday that the group would begin accepting members based on the gender listed on their application, paving the way for transgender boys to join the organization.

“For more than 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America, along with schools, youth sports and other youth organizations, have ultimately deferred to the information on an individual’s birth certificate to determine eligibility for our single-gender programs,” the group said in a statement on its website. “However, that approach is no longer sufficient as communities and state laws are interpreting gender identity differently, and these laws vary widely from state to state.”

The announcement, reported on Monday night by The Associated Press, reverses a policy that drew controversy late last year when a transgender boy in New Jersey was kicked out of the organization about a month after joining.Boy Scouts

“After weeks of significant conversations at all levels of our organization, we realized that referring to birth certificates as the reference point is no longer sufficient,” Michael Surbaugh, the Scouts’ chief executive, said in a recorded statement on Monday.

The announcement came amid a national debate over transgender rights, with cities and states across the nation struggling with whether and how to regulate gender identity in the workplace, in restrooms and at schools.

In recent years, the Boy Scouts of America has expanded rights for gay people. In 2013, the group ended its ban on openly gay youths participating in its activities. Two years later, the organization ended its ban on openly gay adult leaders.

Advocates for gay and transgender people who had pushed for changes in Boy Scouts’ policy praised Monday’s announcement.

“From our perspective, they clearly did the right thing,” said Zach Wahls, who co-founded Scouts for Equality, a nonprofit group that advocates for stronger protections in the organization for gays and transgender people. “My team and I knew that they were considering a policy change, but we are both heartened and surprised by how quickly they moved to change the situation.”

New York Times, 

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

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After GOP pressure, Texas Supreme Court takes gay marriage case

In a rare reversal, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court accepted a gay marriage case Friday after pressure from state GOP leaders and grass-roots activists.

The state’s highest civil court had rejected the case 8-1 in September, prompting a concerted effort to revive a lawsuit that sought to abolish benefits the city of Houston provides to married same-sex couples. Opponents believe the Houston case provides an opportunity for a ruling that limits the impact of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

Gay marriage opponents asked the court to reconsider by filing a rarely granted motion to rehear the case that the court accepted, without comment, on Friday.homophobia

Oral arguments will be heard March 1.

The motion to rehear urged the court to reject the “ideology of the sexual revolution” embraced by federal judges who found a constitutional right to gay marriage, overturned Texas abortion regulations and struck down a Mississippi law that would have allowed individuals and businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples based on religious objections to gay marriage.

A separate friend-of-the-court brief, signed by 70 Republican politicians, conservative leaders and Christian pastors, urged the court to stand up to “federal tyranny” and warned that failure to accept the appeal would deny voters “an opportunity to hear what their duly elected high court justices have to say on such an important issue.”

Ratcheting up the pressure, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, all Republicans, filed a brief telling the court that the Houston lawsuit provides an opportunity to limit the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

Opponents of same-sex marriage, spurred by religious and social conservative leaders, also barraged the court with emails asking justices to strike down the Houston benefits or face a voter backlash in future Republican primaries.

by Chuck Lindell, statesman.com – January 20, 2017

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Under Trump, Approach to Civil Rights Law Is Likely to Change Definitively

Washington — In the final weeks of the Obama administration, the Justice Department won the first hate-crime case involving a transgender victim and sued two cities for blocking mosques from opening.

Prosecutors settled lending-discrimination charges with two banks, then sued a third. They filed legal briefs on behalf of New York teenagers being held in solitary confinement, and accused Louisiana of forcing mentally ill patients into nursing homes.

And then, with days remaining, prosecutors announced a deal to overhaul Baltimore’s Police Department and accused Chicago of unconstitutional police abuses.gay hate

The moves capped a historic and sometimes controversial eight-year span in which the Justice Department pushed the frontiers of civil rights laws, inserting itself into private lawsuits and siding with transgender students, juvenile prisoners, the homeless, the blind, and people who videotape police officers. On issues of gay rights, policing, criminal justice, voting and more, government lawyers argued for a broad interpretation of civil rights laws, a view that they consistently said would put them on the right side of history.

Few areas of federal policy are likely to change so definitively. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, opposes not only the Justice Department’s specific policies on civil rights but its entire approach. While liberal Democrats have criticized Mr. Sessions’s views on specific issues like gay marriage and voting, the larger difference is how differently the Trump administration will view the government’s role in those areas.

by Matt Apuzzo, New York Times, January 19, 2017

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Florida settles federal birth certificate suit, agrees to recognize same-sex married parents

Two years after gay marriage became legal in Florida, the state has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit over birth certificates issued to children born into same-sex marriages.

Two married lesbian couples and the advocacy group Equality Florida Institute sued the state in 2015 after health officials refused to include both parents’ names on the documents. The lawsuit came months after same-sex marriages became legal in Florida and two months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state bans on gay marriage as unconstitutional. 

LGBT family rights in a Trump presidency

American Flag 3D Illustration

“Now more than ever, it’s imperative that our families have every protection available under the law,” Miami family law attorney Elizabeth Schwartz said in an Equality Florida news release. “As a Florida native, I’m grateful my home state has recognized the validity of our marriages and is willing to honor legal parents on this most essential of documents.”

State Department of Health officials had contended they lacked the authority to change birth-certificate forms without lawmakers taking action, a position that led to only birth mothers — and not their spouses — being listed on the documents. But the Republican-dominated Legislature, which last year met from January until mid-March, did not approve changes to the law to recognize that same-sex marriage is legal in Florida.

The Department of Health in May asked U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it was moot because the state had started listing both spouses on birth certificates of children born into same-sex marriages and had started a rule-making process to allow the designation of “parent” — in addition to “mother” and “father” — on the birth records.

But lawyers for the same-sex couples and Equality Florida objected, arguing that the health department’s “recent remedial measures are both substantively incomplete and procedurally lacking in finality” and that the issues are not moot.

Last week, lawyers for the plaintiffs and the state filed a document telling Hinkle they had reached a settlement in the case.

Under the settlement, the state agreed to issue corrected birth certificates free of charge to the plaintiffs and to all same-sex couples who received incorrect documents. The state also pledged to apply the statute regarding birth certificates “and any forms promulgated based on that statute to same-sex spouses in the same manner as they are applied to opposite-sex spouses.”

The state also agreed to pay $55,000 to in legal fees and costs to the plaintiffs.

By Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida – Miamiherald.com – January 11, 2017
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National Organization for Marriage Announces International Anti-LGBT Group

Brian Brown, director of the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage and president of the anti-LGBT hate group World Congress of Families (WCF), has announced the launch of the International Organization for the Family (IOF).

IOF is the new name of the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, which is the parent organization of WCF. The name and mission of the Howard Center have been re-tooled for an international arena, though WCF, which will remain a project of the IOF, according to Brown’s announcement, has always been extremely active internationally. Its world conferences serve as a key nexusfor religious right leaders and activists and the formulation of policies that are detrimental to LGBT people and reproductive health, and they provide a platform for anti-LGBT rhetoric and conspiracy theories

The IOF, which was ironically announced on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, has been in the works for a while.gay hate

In August of this year, the Howard Center sent out a letter to supporters signed by President Emeritus Allan Carlson, in which he stated that the Center’s board of trustees resolved to “sharpen the focus” of the organization “on international family questions” which reflect the reality “that key family policy battles now occur more frequently at the transnational level in bodies such as the U.N., the Organization of American States, and the European Union.” To that end, the board of directors of the Center resolved to change the organization’s name to IOF.  

The name of the Center’s policy journal is also changing from The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy to The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy, but senior editing staff remains the same.

In keeping with the mission of the Howard Center and WCF to dictate the so-called “natural family” –– that marriage is only for one man and one woman –– as the only correct way to be a family, IOF’s first order of business was to release the “Cape Town Declaration” at a WCF regional conference at the Westin Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa.

The declaration purports to affirm marriage as only between a man and a woman, and “the patrimony of all mankind” to secure for children the “birthright of all men: to know the faithful love of the man and woman whose union gave them life.” The declaration goes on to assert that a “thriving culture will therefore serve marriage — and all society —by promoting purity outside it and fidelity within.” These “thriving cultures” will also discourage pornography, adultery and divorce, and will resist attempts to “redefine marriage” to include “same-sex or group bonds, or sexually open or temporary ones.”

Southern Poverty Law Center – December 19, 20165

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