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Saturday, Sep 06, 2008
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| National News |
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| DO TELL, DON'T GO U.S. Army Sgt. Darren Manzella came out on the CBS-TV program 60 Minutes last month, complete with a video of himself and a former boyfriend kissing. Manzella figured that'd get him kicked out of the military under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which says members of the armed forces can be Gay only if they keep it a secret. But nothing has happened to Manzella. At all. "I thought I would at least be asked about the segment or approached and told I shouldn't speak to the media again," he told USA Today on January 8. Manzella's case apparently is not unusual. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network says there is now a record number of openly Gay members of the military - at least 500 that the organization knows about. Discharges under Don't Ask, Don't Tell have fallen sharply since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. DYKES ON BIKES WINS TRADEMARK CASE San Francisco's Dykes on Bikes motorcycle club won the right to keep its trademarked name January 7 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a man who claimed the phrase is anti-male, scandalous and immoral. Attorney Michael McDermott of Dublin, Calif., had challenged the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's acceptance of the trademark, claiming the word "dyke" is widely understood to describe "hyper-militant radicals [who are] hateful toward men." He appealed to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed the case in July, saying McDermott hadn't demonstrated how the organization's name harms him. Asked for comment on the case's resolution, McDermott told the San Francisco Chronicle via e-mail that the Supreme Court "has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda." SEN. CRAIG EXPANDS LEGAL STRATEGY U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who was arrested last summer for allegedly seeking sex with an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport men's room, is trying some new legal arguments in his quest to have his guilty plea reversed by the Minnesota Court of Appeals. In a brief filed January 8, Craig's lawyers argue: o Minnesota's disorderly conduct statute under which Craig pleaded guilty requires that "others" (plural) be alarmed by the conduct and, in Craig's case, only one other person was involved, decoy cop Sgt. Dave Karsnia. o Karsnia couldn't have been upset by Craig's actions - which allegedly included peering through a crack into Karsnia's stall, moving his foot invitingly and repeatedly sliding his hand under the stall divider - because Karsnia was moving his own foot enticingly. o And disorderly conduct must be "offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous or noisy," which, the lawyers argue, Craig's conduct was not. Craig has repeatedly said he isn't Gay or Bisexual and doesn't cruise men's rooms, even after The Idaho Statesman newspaper published the stories of eight men who claim they had sex with him or experienced sexual come-ons from him. Craig has maintained his foot moved into Karsnia's stall because, "I'm a fairly wide guy [and] I tend to spread my legs when I lower my pants so they won't slide," and that his hand went below the stall divider because he was fetching a piece of toilet paper that was underneath or stuck to his shoe. TRANS OFFICIAL RETURNS HRC AWARD The president of the San Francisco Police Commission, Theresa Sparks, returned her 2004 Human Rights Campaign Equality Award during a meeting with HRC President Joe Solmonese in San Francisco January 5. Sparks, who is Transgender, told the Bay Area Reporter she can't stand to look at the trophy anymore, given HRC's behavior during the continuing controversy over whether to include gender-identity protections in the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In November, HRC supported a version of ENDA that protects Gay people but not Transgender people, after Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) insisted the bill would pass the House, which it did, only if "gender identity" were excluded from the language. Hundreds of other national, state and local LGBT groups refused to support the "Trans-free" ENDA, leaving HRC nearly alone in backing Frank's version. The House-passed bill moves next to the U.S. Senate. With assistance from Bill Kelley |
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