TransGriot Note: The May 9 press release from the National Black Justice Coalition concerning the POTUS' marriage endorsement
Washington, D.C. – May 9, 2012 – Today, President Obama affirmed his
support of marriage for loving and committed same-sex couples. The
National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), the nation’s leading Black LGBT
civil rights organization, applauds the President for this historic
endorsement of the freedom to marry.
“It is an honor to witness our President take such a strong stand in
support of gay and lesbian couples across the country,” says Sharon
Lettman-Hicks, Executive Director and CEO of the National Black Justice
Coalition. “This affirmation reinforces the Administration’s ongoing
commitment to LGBT Americans and our families.”
The President has had an exemplary record advancing protections for
the LGBT community. However, he explained that his position on marriage
equality had been changing and had not explicitly proclaimed his support
of extending marriage to gay and lesbian couples until now. Despite the
repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” ending the legal defense of the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), endorsing the Student Non-Discrimination
Act (SNDA) and more, President Obama had been under increased pressure
for his self-described “evolving” position on marriage equality when
Vice President Biden said he was “absolutely comfortable” with marriage
for loving and committed same-sex couples.
“As my (s)hero, Barbara Jordan, once said, ‘one thing is clear to me:
we, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different
from ourselves,’” Lettman-Hicks adds. “Here is President Obama, the
nation’s first Black president, taking a position that no sitting
president in history has had the fortitude to ever take. If anyone in
America has ever wondered what courageous leadership looks like, here it
is.”
###
The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) is a
civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. NBJC’s mission is to eradicate
racism and homophobia.
The president's big announcement also had major ripple effects in my beloved hometown since we not only have one of the oldest GLBT political orgs in the South, but Houston has one Annise D. Parker as its current mayor.
Ahem. May I remind you peeps that reside along I-5, I-95 and inside I-495 that Houston is the largest city to have elected an openly gay mayor and Annise and First Lady Kathy Hubbard happen to be one of the couples the POTUS talked about
Mayor Parker also has raised the ire of our local faith based bigots for being the now two term mayor of Houston, which may I remind you peeps is the fourth largest city in the nation and the largest in Texas.
She was also one of the peeps who was criticizing the pace of his same gender marriage evolution and was surprised to receive a call by senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett in the wake of the evolution announcement..
Of course she got asked about her reaction to the POTUS' interview by one of our local TV stations because she's part of the Mayor's Marriage Equality Initiative..
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Well, President Obama finally said yesterday in an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts (not sure if we're related) the words that elements of the rainbow community have wanted him to say since 2008 about same sex marriage.
I had no doubts he felt that way based on statements he'd made back when he was an Illinois state senator in 1996 and his record on rainbow community issues since taking office.
As I've said more than a few times, I support same gender marriage and I'm exceedingly proud that it was an African-American president who announced he supports this issue. Where I part company is not sharing the feeling prevalent in some quarters of the rainbow community that marriage is THE most important issue in the TBLG community human rights push.
And just to remind you what issue I think is most important for the rainbow community, having and keeping a J-O-B is. But back to this post.
I'm also looking at the big picture here and wondering if in the feeding frenzy to hound President Obama into stating six months before the election that he supports same gender marriage, did the vanillacentric GL community just repeat the political mistake they made in 2004 by pushing same gender marriage when we had the chance to defeat George W Bush that year.
To me and many African Americans trans, gay, straight and cisgender, it is vitally important that President Obama be standing on the steps of the Capitol on January 20 taking the oath of office for his second term. It puts him in the same historic territory with other two term presidents, gives him a chance to continue building on his legacy and forever removes the possibility that the conservafools can stamp his presidency as a failure despite their best attempts to do so.
It is also important to the African-American community that he be there along with his family in that nice white mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue my ancestors built with their unpaid labor through January 20, 2017.
The next president will have the opportunity to possibly select three Supreme Court justices.
Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were selected by Ronald Reagan, and Clinton appointee Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hinting at retirement from the SCOTUS.
We have 50 federal judiciary seats open because the GOP is playing the massive resistance game and hoping y'all fall for the okey doke and elect Willard to the presidency so he can start filling them with federal judges selected by Robert Bork
So yes, GLBT community, it IS about the federal judiciary. When you can't get legislation through a logjammed Congress, the court system is the next place to redress those grievances we have.
As we trans people have discovered when we've gone to federal court lately, the president who appoints the people who sit in these judicial seats in an era of hyper partisanship matters.
As for the assertion that it will cost the off the charts popular President Obama votes in the African-American community, I will defer to the wisdom of Aisha Moodie-Mills and what she had to say about that.
“It’s really quite ridiculous to believe that black folks would stay home and not vote for the first black president over gay marriage. It’s just ludicrous! No megachurch pastor, as bigoted as he may be, has the power to persuade a whole congregation of black folks to turn against this president.”
So yeah, I'm not fazed about the 4% cookie chomping segment of sellout GOP knee-grows that were already planning to vote for Mitt version 2012. The last Republican presidential candidate to get more than 15% of the African-American vote was Junior in 2004, and he had the help of 18 anti-gay marriage referenda on the ballot and a legion of sellout knee-grow megachurch pastors such as TD Jakes, Bishop Eddie Long and Donnie McClurkin acting as surrogates to do that.
But I'd be lying if I wrote in this post I wasn't concerned about how this announcement will affect a presidential election that has six months to go. The facts are many non-white peeps are nervous about this election.
We already know there's a certain percentage of this electorate who will not vote for an African-American period. Combined with the fact that ALEC and their GOP legislative partners have been merrily passing voter ID suppression legislation targeted at reducing the number of Black, Latino, senior and student voters going to the polls on November 6 that were the major reasons he took Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico and Indiana, and you can understand why I'm spending a lot of time in prayer hoping that the justice loving part of the American electorate shows up on November 6 to overcome the bigots who will be even more frothing at the mouth motivated to defeat the POTUS.
I will be watching to see if the Internet chatter and other rhetoric I heard from vanillacentric GL peeps hollering for him to 'evolve already' comes to pass.
May I remind y'all that non-white BTLG people never left him along with those of us liberal progressives who remember our Political Science 101 and 102 that see the big political picture beyond the 'all marriage all the time' agenda.
I had more than a few testy conversations with the 'evolve already' peeps and GetEqual folks who asserted that the POTUS announcing support of same gender marriage will 'energize the base' and increase support amongst 'the gay community'.
Yeah, I noted the news blurb that stated the POTUS raised $1 million within 90 minutes of making that announcement at 2 PM CDT, but how much of it was from the gay community and are the GayTM's that y'all declared closed to him reopened?
Now that the President Obama has said those five words you wanted to hear, time for y'all to stand and deliver. Time to circle November 6 on your calendar, get registered to vote and take a bunch of friends to the polls with you because the Tea Klux Klan and friends are damned sure organizing to do the same.
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Now where's my Maalox?
TransGriot Note: Press Release from the National Black Justice Coalition concerning the regrettable passage of the unjust Amendment One
Yesterday, North Carolinians voted to pass Amendment One, which will change the state’s constitution to recognize only marriage between one man and one woman; ban civil unions; and eliminate health care, prescription drug coverage and other benefits for public employees and children receiving domestic partner benefits.
The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), the nation’s leading Black LGBT civil rights organization, responds to North Carolina’s disappointing passage of Amendment One and how Black faith leaders rallied to condemn the amendment as well as educate voters.
Recent polls found that 60 percent of North Carolina voters were unaware of the full implications of the referendum. In fact, Public Policy Polling found that “if all voters were informed of [the amendment’s] consequences, the amendment would fail by a 38-46 margin…”
“It is a grave disappointment that North Carolinians voted to deny couples and children equal protections under the law,” says Sharon Lettman-Hicks, NBJC Executive Director and CEO. “Although this represents an unfortunate setback to progress and has devastating consequences to many families, we are encouraged by the number of Black clergy that spoke out against the amendment.”
Support for Amendment One had continued to slip, especially among African Americans. Public Policy Polling data revealed support for the amendment from Black voters dropped from 61/30 to 51/39. That was the lowest level of support PPP has found in monthly polling of the amendment since last October.
Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, spoke out in opposition of any proposal that would alter the federal or state constitution to exclude any groups from equal protection under the law. Rev. Barber joined several Black pastors that spoke out publicly about their stance against the amendment.
###
The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) is a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. NBJC’s mission is to eradicate racism and homophobia.
Don't blame the POTUS for it, as I have heard in some politically ignorant and obtuse quarters of the vanillacentric GL community today.
North Carolina state Senator James Forrester (R) is the one who sponsored this unjust amendment.. But you won't be able to do much screaming at him because he's dead.
But here's the list of people you can blame.
You can start with all the liberal progressives in North Carolina who sat out the November 2010 midterm election to 'punish the Democrats' and ended up giving the Tea Klux Klan and the Republicans control of the legislature for the first time in 140 years.
Democratic control of the North Carolina legislature was what kept similar Amendment One style constitution bans from seeing the light of day to begin with because they were routinely killed in committee. One they lost control, the Dems had no way to stop them and the GOP introduced, passed it and put it on the ballot.
You can blame the faith based conservafools, Billy Graham, their knee-grow spokessellout Patrick Wooden and other like minded pastors who relentlessly pimped Amendment One and worked like mad spreading disinformation and lies in violation of several commandments in order to get it passed.
You can blame all the registered liberal progressive voters in the state who for whatever reason, didn't bother to show up at the polls. By not exercising your right to vote, congratulations, you helped pass this unjust amendment and through your inaction are now complicit in the oppression of other people.
You can blame the 61% of North Carolina's voters who for whatever reason, voted for the unjust amendment despite the best efforts of the large coalition that tried to 'ejumacate' people about what would happen if that happened. It is now regrettably part of North Carolina's constitution until either North Carolina's or the United States Supreme Court overturn it.
The polls open later today in the Tarheel State on the Amendment 1 ballot question to enshrine a same gender marriage ban (which by the way is already banned in the state) into North Carolina's constitution.
"Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized." states the Amendment 1 language.
But it also goes one odious step further in addition to inserting the ban on same-sex marriage in the North Carolina Constitution.
If Amendment 1 passes it would also frack with civil unions or any other form of "domestic legal union" for both gay and straight couples by banning those as well. .
North Carolina was the last of the old Confederate states that didn't have a constitutional gay marriage ban to the disgust of the faith-based homobigots because it kept getting killed in committee when the Democrats controlled the state legislature. But when the Tea Klux Klan got control of the North Carolina legislature in the wake of the 2010 midterm elections, it opened the door for this to happen.
Elections matter, people. Same gender marriage when it comes to a vote has lost 31 times, and unfortunately the polling coming out of North Carolina on the eve of this election isn't looking good for the rainbow team. But there's always hope and the chance for an upset.
To tell you how much this issue matters, I leave you with the wise words of the Rev Dr. William J. Barber II, the North Carolina NAACP president. Dr. Barber breaks it down with a historical, moral and well-reasoned argument against these anti-gay marriage amendments.
Please heed those words and defeat this unjust amendment, because no one's civil rights should be put up for a vote by a misguided and hate filled majority.
Wasn't surprised by the recent revelation that the National Organization for Marriage was attempting a cynical strategy to split African-Americans and Latinos from the coalition supporting same gender marriage and LGBT rights.
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” read the NOM memo that outlined a plan to recruit African-American spokespeople to speak out
against gay marriage, then organize a media campaign around their
objections.
Of course, NOM is unrepentant about getting busted and went into damage control mode, with NOM president Brian Brown
boasting that they proudly bring together people of difference races,
creeds and colors.
"We have worked with prominent African-American and Hispanic leaders,
including Dr. Alveda C. King, Bishop George McKinney of the COGIC
Church, Bishop Harry Jackson and the New York State Senator Reverend
Rubén Díaz Sr., all of whom share our concern about protecting marriage
as the union of one man and one woman."
Let's be real for a moment and cut the conservabull. It's more like you work with sellouts and human rights oppressors from those communities.
African-American leaders from the NAACP and NBJC began calling out NOM for their reprehensible tactics. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous stated in a press release:
“This memo only reveals the limits of a cynical agenda,” stated Jealous.
“The truth is that no group, no matter how well-funded, can drive an
artificial wedge between our communities. People of color understand
what it is like to be the target of discrimination. No public relations
strategy will make us forget that.”
It followed up a statement by former NAACP chairman Julina Bond in The Hill in which he called out NOM, stating the strategy memo "It confirmed a suspicion that some evil hand was behind this.”
National Black Justice Coalition Executive Director Sharon Lettman-Hicks also blasted NOM and expressed her concerns about their attempts to exploit the African-American faith community to push their reprehensible agenda..
"These documents expose NOM for what it really is--a hate group determined to use African American faith leaders a pawns to push their damaging agenda and as mouthpieces to amplify that hatred. NOM
is fighting a losing battle. With these memos made public, the black
faith community must refuse to be exploited and refuse to deny their
fellow brothers and sisters equal protections under the law."
Now can we get some other African-American leaders to step up to the plate and condemn this hate group?
The DC City Council without drama on March 6 unanimously approved the Civil Marriage Dissolution Equality Amendment Act of 2011. The measure permits same sex couples who got married in DC but reside elsewhere to dissolve those marriages without having to establish six months of residency in the District.
Yep, even Marion Barry voted for it.
Because marriage equality is not recognized in all states, couples who got married in states to do allow it find that when the relationship goes sour to the point they seek a divorce, their states of residence for fear they will undermine their anti-gay marriage amendments will not grant a same sex divorce..
The Act was introduced by Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D) to 'introduce dignity to the process of dissolving a marriage' according to a Metro Weekly article Eight of the 12 DC councilmembers cosponsored it and the measure unanimously passed a February 7 preliminary vote .
The measure goes to Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray (D) for his signature.
TransGriot Note: The May 9 press release from the National Black Justice Coalition concerning the POTUS' marriage endorsement 
