What Would An Omnibus LGBT Rights Bill Contain?

Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) is an openly gay freshman congressman who has been making lots of news lately. He just returned from Iraq, where he asked the American & Iraqi governments to investigate the murder of gay Iraqis. Now, he's talking about an omnibus LGBT rights bill.

What would such a bill include?

The nonprofit donors group eQualityGiving.org last month proposed that Congress tackle omnibus legislation that would include language regarding hate crimes, employment non-discrimination and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” as well as language from other LGBT rights-related bills.

The group’s proposed measure would also contain a clause requiring the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships legalized by states.

Marriage rights wouldn't be included. Polis said that if the bill contained marriage language, “it’s a more difficult battle.”

President Obama is a supporter of gay Civil Unions. From the White House website: "Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights."

Could the omnibus bill contain some sort of gay civil union or domestic partnership language? It very well could. Recent national polls have shown majority support for civil unions, so it's not politically impossible. Excited to see how this develops.

More On Gay Iraq

Gay City News shows why having independent gay papers are really important, with this great piece of journalism from Doug Ireland.

In addition to interviewing gay Congressman Polis, who recently returned from Iraq, Ireland speaks with Iraqi LGBT coordinator Ali Hili and gets new insights on life for gay Iraqis.

Ali Hili, the coordinator of Iraqi LGBT, who briefed Polis by telephone for his Iraqi trip, told Gay City News from London that "we have been able to confirm 63 more murders of gay people in Iraq just since December," bringing to nearly 600 the number of cases of LGBT Iraqis killed for their sexuality that his group has documented since the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of all Iraqi Shiite Muslims, issued a death-to-all-gays fatwa in 2005. But, Hili added, "Since there are parts of Iraq where we have no correspondents or members, we are convinced that the actual number of gays killed in these last months since December is much higher." At the same time, the BBC reported last week that according to Amnesty International "in the last few weeks 25 boys and men are reported to have been killed in Baghdad because they were, or perceived to be, gay." In an unusual move, Amnesty International wrote to the Iraqi President, Nouri al-Maliki, demanding "urgent and concerted action" by his government to stop the killings.

Hili told this reporter, "There is an intensive media campaign against homosexuals in Iraq at this time which we believe is inspired by the Ministry of the Interior, both in the daily newspapers and on nearly all the television stations. Their reports brand all gays as 'perverts' and try to portray us as terrorists who are undermining the moral fiber of Iraqi youth." Hili said the current homo-hating media campaign appears to have been sparked as an unfortunate reaction to an April 4 Reuters dispatch that reported: "Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality... The police source said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading 'pervert' in Arabic on their chests."

The whole article is well worth a read.

Thanks Rep. Jared Polis

Congressman Polis, the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Congress as a freshman, recently returned from a trip to Iraq. This was Polis' second trip to the region and he went to investigate claims of violence toward Iraqi gays.

During his tour in Iraq, the Examiner reports that Polis is also liaising with human rights groups about human rights violations that have recently been reported, such as the unconfirmed discovery of a shallow mass-grave of 25 gay Iraqis, and further cases including the death of two more men on April 4th who, again, unconfirmed but startling reports suggest were killed by a faction of the Iraqi military who, in turn, are blaming the killings on the families of the men, because, they say, they were so ashamed at a member of their family being gay.

The Denverpost also reports that Polis was given a letter that was allegedly written by a man who had been incarcerated and severely beaten until he confessed to being a member of the UK based LGBT rights group Iraqi-LGBT. The man, the letter went on to allege, had been sentenced to death by the Karkh court.

Polis wants action from both the American & Iraqi Governments:

"We will now wait and see whether the Iraqi government is serious about protecting the human rights of all Iraqis and what role our own State Department has to play in helping to protect this minority in Iraq," Polis said in the release. "I am most disturbed by allegations that the Iraqi government itself may be involved in the persecutions. This warrants an immediate investigation from both American and Iraqi governments."

Kudos to the courageous Congressman.

I've blogged about the Iraqi LGBT crisis recently.

NY Times On Iraqi Gays

Last week I asked gays to be mindful that despite victories in Iowa (and now Vermont & D.C.) we still had a long way to go to provide the most basic human rights to gays in The Middle East.

My piece was met with more scorn that I expected. One reader told me that we need to mind our own business! I truly hope isolationism is not the lesson that the left has learned from the Iraq War.

Now, The New York Times has stepped up with a brilliant (yet horrible) piece on gay Iraqis. It's worse than I thought.

In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.

“Three of my closest friends have been killed during the past two weeks alone,” said Basim, 23, a hairdresser. “They had been planning to go to a cafe away from Sadr City because we don’t feel safe here, but they killed them on the way. I had planned to go with them, but fortunately I didn’t.”

The entire piece is worth a read for a look inside Iraq's developing gay culture. It's extraordinarily unfair of American gays to advocate for gays to come out and express themselves and then abandon them to be murdered by thugs.

Queerty has more on what you can do.

Iowa Says Yes, We Can

Iowa's Supreme Court handed down an amazing unanimous decision striking down a 1998 gay marriage ban.

Equal protection under the Iowa Constitution is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike. Since territorial times, Iowa has given meaning to this constitutional provision, striking blows to slavery and segregation, and recognizing women’s rights. The court found the issue of same-sex marriage comes to it with the same importance as the landmark cases of the past.”

This is great news. No doubt that the cultural zeitgeist is changing and Iowa is on the right side of history. This is the best thing Iowa has done since giving Barack Obama a big win in the Democratic Caucus.

Yesterday, I blogged about the disconnect between the American gay rights movement and the big picture. My argument stands that gay marriage shouldn't be at the top of our agenda. Bob Ostertag's brilliant piece on The Huffington Post is well worth a full read - but I'll give you a taste.

The fact is most of us won't marry even if we have the right to. We are putting all our resources into winning a right that only the few of us in long-term conventional couple relationships will enjoy. What's more, we are creating a social climate in which young queers are encouraged to recast their vision of the relationships they seek to favor the married couple. This is not only a loss for the vibrancy of queer culture, it is a disservice to young people who will not be well served by their nuclear family ambitions. Just consider the high number of gay and lesbian divorces (yes, the rate is already high despite the fact that we have not even fully won the right to marry yet).

It is no secret that marriage isn't working for straight people. That's why religious institutions are so up in arms about it. The institution of marriage is in crisis. On what basis does anyone imagine it is going to work better for queers?

Through years of queer demonstrations, meetings, readings and dinner table conversations, about gay bashing, police violence, job discrimination, housing discrimination, health care discrimination, immigration discrimination, family ostracism, teen suicide, AIDS profiteering, sodomy laws, and much more, I never once heard anyone identify the fact that they couldn't get married as being a major concern. And then, out of the blue, gay marriage suddenly became the litmus test by which we measure our allies. We have now come to the point that many unthinkingly equate opposition to gay marriage with homophobia.

As Bob says, marriage is a largely failed social institution. We're talking 40-50% of marriages fail, no small amount. Marriage doesn't have anything to do with my life, I only know it as something my parents did before they got divorced.

Gays Should Care More About Iraq Than Iowa

In the last couple hours I've gotten several messages on Facebook about Friday's impending Iowa Supreme Court ruling on Gay Marriage. Several of the activists groups I loosely belong to are planning a "celebration or protest" rally Friday evening in New York's Union Square from 6:30-7:30PM. The ruling is important, but it's likely to fall short of the full marriage rights that we're hoping for.

On the other side of the world, the idea of gay marriage is a total fantasy. In Iraq, over 100 gays have been scheduled for execution. They will be murdered by their government for being born homosexual.

Anyone brave enough to be a gay activist in Iraq is hunted down and murdered. One such activist group, Iraqi-LGBT, says:

“Raids by the Iraqi police and Ministry of Interior forces cost our group [to the extent of] disappearing and killing of 17 members working for Iraqi-LGBT since 2005.

“The death penalty has been increasing at an alarming rate in Iraq since the new Iraqi regime reintroduced it in August 2004.

“In 2008, at least 285 people were sentenced to death, and at least 34 executed. In 2007 at least 199 people were sentenced to death and 33 were executed, while in 2006 at least 65 people were put to death.

There isn't anything wrong with caring about gay marriage, it's certainly something we should work toward. But scheduling a rally to protest (or celebrate) the decision of Iowa's Supreme Court in the face of gay genocide in Iraq, rising HIV rates among young gays, and the increase in gay youth homelessness seems fairly trite to me.

Bottom line: It's time for the gay civil rights movement to expand it's agenda.

Why I'm Not That Into Caring About AIG

I'm with Brad Friedman on the anger over AIG's bonus nightmare. Sure, it sucks - I wish they didn't get any money - but it's only .1% of the cash we forked over to them.

I guess I'm just in the minority here, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting exercised about $165 million (just to put that into perspective, the movie sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian had a budget of $200 million) in bonuses to AIG employees.

Yeah, it's a shame that approximately one-tenth of one-percent of the $144 billion made available to the company by the federal government in bailout monies went to such bonuses, but where is all the furor from public officials, media outlets and bloggers -- from both Right and Left -- over the 12 billions of dollars (with a "b") sent over to Iraq as pallets of cash (literally, shrink-wrapped $100 bills), which then simply disappeared into that trillion (with a "t") dollar rat hole without accounting or explanation?

Where is the outrage and accountability there? Nowhere.

How about the $4 billion (with a "b") that went to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 to purchase privately made electronic voting systems which don't work and don't meet the federal standards it was claimed that they did?

Keep things in perspective people.