GetEQUAL on today's protest: We want that promised Senate vote on ENDA

Rex Wockner (who blogs here) filed this report on the action in Las Vegas today:

Members of direct-action group GetEQUAL halted traffic on the Las Vegas Strip at the New York, New York hotel's Statue of Liberty July 20 to protest U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's perceived inaction on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Police were slow to arrive on the scene, leaving eight southbound lanes of the thoroughfare blocked for some 20 minutes.

Activists accomplished the feat by stretching a large banner across the street. It said: "Reid: No one can do more? GetEQUAL.org."

Eight people were arrested, including GetEQUAL co-chair Robin McGehee and Don't Ask, Don't Tell activist Lt. Dan Choi.

And, via press release, statements from the GetEQUAL:

“Our community has literally watched decades go by with campaign promise after campaign promise from Congressional leaders about the passage of ENDA,” said Robin McGehee, co-founder and co-director of GetEQUAL. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s own press aide told the community at the end of May, ‘The Senate has no plans for taking up ENDA. It would be very helpful for people to encourage the Senate to outline a plan for considering the bill.’ GetEQUAL’s members and supporters agreed, and we hope that Senator Reid agrees, as well.”

“The time to pass ENDA is now,” said Heather Cronk, managing director of GetEQUAL. “No more delays, no more excuses, and no more broken promises. People need these federal protections, especially the hundreds of thousands of LGBT workers living in dozens of states where it is still legal to fire someone solely for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender."

Promises were made. Promises should be kept. Last September at an HRC fundraiser, Majority Leader Reid stated that he was "committed to passing [ENDA] out of the Senate:

Reid addressed almost all of the key LGBT issues in his speech. A full version of the remarks is after the break, but this excerpt is key:

I am proud that we have acted in the name of Matthew Shepard, whose name has for 10 years been associated with hate crimes. Because of your efforts, your hard work and your leadership in helping make this bill become a law, Matthew Shepard’s name will now be associated with justice.

I am also proud that Nevada has passed a domestic partnership law, which is another major step forward toward ensuring every citizen of this state can know equality.

But we have more such steps to take.

The Senate will soon outlaw discrimination in the workplace by making it illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote anyone simply based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. It’s called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and I am committed to passing it out of the Senate and sending it to President Obama for his signature.

GetEQUAL just asked Reid to follow through on that commitment. Seems that much of what GetEQUAL does is to ask politicians to follow through on their promises. We should expect nothing less.

Funny how so many of these commitments are made at fundraisers. Imagine if HRC ever demanded accountability from the elected officials who make these promises.

Sometimes, you just have to take it to the streets -- or Las Vegas Boulevard. Read More...

Eight arrested at GetEQUAL's ENDA protest on Las Vegas strip

Robin McGehee, Dan Choi and seven other protesters were arrested on the Las Vegas strip this afternoon while engaging in civil disobedience. They were sending a message to the Majority Leader, Harry Reid, about ENDA. Here's what it looked like:

(photo courtesy of GetEQUAL -- and definitely click on the photo for the larger image. It's impressive.) Read More...

I just took DOD's confidential DADT survey of the troops - three times!

UPDATE: Show DOD you mean business, donate to AMERICAblog. If you like our hard-hitting activist journalism on behalf of the LGBT community and our allies, then please donate and help us continue our work. Thanks so much.

UPDATE: A Pentagon spokeswoman called me to clarify that the online chat we reference below is not officially part of what they are calling the "survey" of the troops. It is, rather, a "confidential dialogue" - "a tool developed so they could have a confidential communication between servicemembers and Westat," the group hired to run the query of the service members. She particularly wanted to note, as I already mentioned below, that this online chat dialogue was intended to help reach out to gay and lesbian service members who might not be comfortable using their DOD computers to do the actual survey (this online chat can be done any computer, including non-DOD computers).

The problem, I explained to her, is that it's particularly disturbing if the tool created to help reach out to gay and lesbian service members is potentially so corrupted that its results are rendered meaningless. We can't have a dialogue based on the honor system. They have to have a system set up that grants confidentiality but also guarantees that the same person doesn't give feedback multiple times (or just as bad, that people outside of the services (namely, the anti-gay bigots) somehow are permitted to participate in the dialogue, as I show below).

Finally, the spokeswoman said repeatedly that "this is not a referendum." Well, you decided to survey the troops, so don't try to convince us that their opinion now won't matter. This is a tool that DOD will be using to gauge how to proceed with repeal, it's results may very well influence Congress' legislation on repeal. If the tool is corrupted, if the responses can't be trusted, then it may influence DOD in a way that doesn't benefit any of us.



So much for the Defense Department's super secret $4.5 million survey of the troops to ask them how they feel about repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I, an avowed gay activist, just took the online chat part of the survey - three times in fact. Perhaps DOD should reconsider just how good and informative, and accurate, this survey is. (They also might want to get their money back.)

In a nutshell, I was able to get three different PIN numbers to gain access to the online chat part of the survey three times, as three different people. Two of those times I was on the same computer, meaning there are no adequate safeguards to stop people from taking the survey multiple times - hell, I was logged in to the two surveys at the same time. And one of the three times, I was able to have a kid, who isn't military, participate in the survey, answering questions from a real human being (apparently) in a chat room of sorts. My intent - to find out whether or not the survey is secure, whether or not it can be hacked (well, this isn't even hacking). It's not, and it can.

As you know, DOD is surveying the troops about how they feel about the commander in chief's desire to repeal DADT. As a part of that survey, they are letting service members participate in an online chat survey, where a real person interviews them about the policy. That's the part of the survey I was just permitted to take, repeatedly.

Below are the screen shots of the two different surveys I personally was given access to (the third is at the top of this post) - these are the first screens AFTER you're accepted into the survey.

Page that asks you your PIN number:



Actually survey page, once you've entered your PIN and you're in the survey.

Survey 1:



Survey 2:



I have the full screen captures, that show my unique PIN numbers, but am not showing them publicly in order to protect my sources. I can show them to any journalists who would like proof that this story is real.

Another interesting point: I got my multiple PIN numbers from the same person, who was able to themselves get multiple PIN numbers. Meaning, military people can log in multiple times to get the PIN numbers they need to take the survey, so they, or their non-military friends - or even gay (or anti-gay) activists, can take the survey. I'm also told that DOD civilians can take the survey - with all due respect, who cares what they think? I thought this was about active duty military?

This is really ridiculous. The survey has now been totally corrupted. Just as our groups and advocates predicted. Read More...

Will Dems jettison gay families from immigration bill?

Anyone want to take a bet?

Seems that excluding gay families would be an especially big problem for the Senate sponsor, Chuck Schumer. Just saying. Read More...

BREAKING: GetEQUAL protest in Las Vegas asking Reid for a vote on ENDA

UPDATE @ 4:34 PM: Just got a report from Las Vegas that Robin McGehee and Dan Choi, and several others, have been arrested. And, it's 106 degrees on the ground out there. Photo of Robin cuffs here.

UPDATE @ 4:19 PM: The protesters have stopped traffic has been stopped on the Las Vegas Strip. Photo here.

More photos and tweets here.
____________
We've learned that GetEQUAL is taking an action right now in Las Vegas calling on Majority Leader Harry Reid to schedule a Senate vote on ENDA. As many as 20 activists are involved with the protest.

This is the info. we have:

The protest will include activists shutting down traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard with a banner that will read “REID: No One Can Do More? GetEQUAL.org”, forming a picket line with signs reading “I can still be fired for who I am” and unfurling a banner across the pedestrian walk between MGM and New York, New York casinos that will read, “REID: PASS ENDA NOW! GetEqual.org”.

Also, the protesters "will attempt to stop traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the Statue of Liberty monument right outside the New York, New York hotel and casino. They will also be banners across the pedestrian walkway that runs between MGM Grand and New York, New York."

Apparently, there's quite a bit of coverage from the traditional media in Las Vegas. I'll post more, including photos, when I get them. Read More...

Pam on 'The hot, throbbing same-sex military fantasies of Elaine Donnelly'

Pam Spaulding is the Rude Pundit today. And, she does a masterful job of skewering Elaine Donnelly:

If she didn't exist, someone would need to invent Donnelly. I imagine her at the keyboard, moist, nearly at hot-flash fever pitch, typing...

"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression...Like a woman who is stared at, her breasts are stared at," Donnelly explained. She further explained the "absolutely devastating" effect of homosexuals "introducing erotic factors" and made a comparison to Sen. Larry Craig's adventure at the Minneapolis airport. She said admitting gays to the military would be "forced cohabitation" and a policy of "relax and enjoy it."

Whew. Did anyone need a cigarette after that? Let's not use that word moist in reference to Donnelly again.

Ick.

Donnelly is a gay-sex obsessed not. But, she's also a leading homophobic opponent of DADT repeal, has a lot of influence at the Pentagon. And, she's been pushing "separate, but equal":

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said the question is whether the military, without a ban on gays serving openly, will opt for mixing gays and heterosexual troops in the same facilities or have "separate but equal" facilities.

"That's what [Conway] seems to be advocating here," she said. This is something the working group established by Gates to look at repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell should address up front, Donnelly said.

"I think that, in itself, is why Congress will vote to retain the law and not repeal it," she said.

Elaine Donnelly has the ears of some pretty important people at the Pentagon. My guess is that she's going to push the concept of "facility adjustments" (and that doesn't mean just show curtains) to delay the end of DADT.

Yes, she does think about gays and gay sex a lot. More than most people. Read More...

New research shows the 20 'gayest' cities in America

Richard Florida has an article at The Daily Beast on new research from the UCLA's Williams Institute. Based on the proportion of same-sex couples compared to the national average, they rank the 20 "gayest" cities.

New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, D.C., Boston, San Diego, Denver, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, all make the list of the 20 gayest metros. But so do Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, Santa Rosa and Sacramento, Springfield, Massachusetts, Portland, Maine, and college towns like Eugene, Oregon, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Ithaca, New York.

The full list is here, with some surprises (Portland, ME is number 3 and Miami and Los Angeles come in behind Ann Arbor and Columbus).

The article also has an interesting discussion looking at which comes first, economic prosperity or an increased gay community.

As Gates and I have pointed out elsewhere, the presence of LGBT people isn’t a sufficient condition for wealth creation in and of itself; gay men and lesbians are no more sophisticated, economically productive, innovative, or entrepreneurial than any other group on average. But places that attract gay people and lesbians tend to have the same open-minded attitudes and business styles that foster innovation. A visible LGBT community is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” signaling openness to new ideas, new business models, and diverse and different thinking kinds of people—precisely the characteristics of a local ecosystem that can attract cutting-edge entrepreneurs and mobilize new companies.

Read More...

On the stand today at DADT trial, Servicemember United's Alex Nicholson

UPDATE @12:42 PM: Servicemembers United issued a press release about Alex's testimony. Here's his quote:

"I am especially honored to be the lead veteran witness in this case and to have the opportunity to represent all gay and lesbian troops and veterans on the witness stand today at this very important and historic trial," said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." "This unnecessary and bigoted law has caused untold harm to each and every person who has served under it, and that, in turn, has harmed the quality and readiness of our armed forces."

___________
Via Karen Ocamb:

On Tuesday, Nicholson will face another test of honor and courage. But this time, in District Court in Riverside, California, he will be challenged to hold his own on the witness stand against the very government he joined the Army to defend in 2001. After Nicholson became an honorary member of the Log Cabin Republican Club of Georgia in 2006 (see the declaration of Jamies Ensley [pdf] who recruited him), he became central to the Log Cabins’ then two-year old case against the United States of America to prove that the DADT law passed by Congress is unconstitutional. Nicholson’s discharge under DADT gives LCR standing to bring the case.

If last week’s behavior by the Justice Department lawyers is an indication of how he will be treated – it will be a grueling day.

Karen's post notes two key things: 1) The DOJ's lawyers are being particularly aggressive towards the witnesses; and 2) the seeming lack of interest in this trial from the LGBT community.

That second point raises this question from Karen:

What does it say about the real principles of the LGBT movement for equality that no one but three local LGBT activists, a couple of Log Cabin members from Palm Springs and a handful of reporters showed up for part one of this trial?

LCR is posting the transcripts of the trial here. But, Ocamb, who has been at the trial, notes:

transcripts don’t do justice, as it were, to the arrogance of the DOJ attorneys.

That info. alone should be provoking more interest from the LGBT community. Read More...

On NJ's failed civil unions law, from anti-marriage NJ Senators

Great new video from Garden State Equality. The state's civil union law isn't working -- and it's opponents of marriage who say that.

For example, Senator Kip Bateman, who voted against marriage, said, "The civil union law has not proven to work. And, everyone, unfortunately, is not getting equal rights under the law. And, that's wrong." It is wrong. Fix it.

NOM's hate bus is stopping in Trenton today, btw. Read More...

The U.S. 'finds itself falling behind in one of the great trends of human history.'

Great editorial in today's Sun Sentinel titled "U.S. falls even further behind on gay rights." It's true. And, it's wrong:

Argentina now joins Canada, South Africa, a handful of nations in western Europe, several states of the United States and the District of Columbia in recognizing that the full rights and privileges of marriage ought to apply to all people, regardless of sexual orientation.

Sadly, the United States, which has traditionally been at the vanguard of human rights developments, finds itself falling behind in one of the great trends of human history. There are any number of reasons for this: our deeply ingrained religious mores, the generally right-of-center views of our body politic, and a reluctance on the part of timid politicians to unnecessarily energize a dwindling but dedicated group of voters bent on retaliation at the polls.

Prejudice against homosexuals will die away in time; already, younger generations of Americans regard with bemusement their elders' unease concerning the topics of gay marriage and adoption, as they do with matters of race.

Someday, the issue will seem quaint here in America, as it already does in other countries where gay marriage has been seen not to result in a cataclysmic devaluation of the institution of matrimony.

Until then, those who cherish human rights and the concept of equal protection under the law will be heartened in their struggle as they look to advances in countries like Argentina for inspiration.

Looking for inspiration from Argentina.

We need to create our own dedicated group of voters bent on retaliation at the polls. Read More...