Gay Cowboys Awarded $43K From Texas County Over Denied Marriage License

A Texas county clerk’s refusal to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple has cost taxpayers more than $43,000.

The Hood County Commission has agreed to settle a lawsuit against Clerk Katie Lang, who cited her religious beliefs in refusing to issue a marriage license to Jim Cato and Joe Stapleton (above) following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

After Cato and Stapleton, a couple of 27 years, filed a federal lawsuit, Lang quickly relented and issued the license — but it would be too late.

Lang (right), represented by the anti-gay Liberty Institute, could have been on the hook for more than half a million dollars in attorney’s fees and damages, according to Cato and Stapleton’s attorneys. However, the couple agreed to forego damages, and the attorneys cut their hourly rate in half to avoid protracted litigation.

Pat O’Connell, one of the couple’s attorneys, said in a release announcing the settlement (believed to be the first in a case where a county clerk refused to issue a same-sex marriage license):

“It is a shame that Hood County Clerk Katie Lang refused to follow the rule of law, causing our clients to go through the difficulties of hiring lawyers and filing a federal lawsuit to obtain the marriage license to which they are constitutionally entitled. And it is sad that the taxpayers of Hood County have to pay the price for their elected official’s misconduct.”

Jan Soifer, another attorney for Cato and Stapleton, added:

“Marriage equality is finally the law of the land. Instead of seeking legal advice from the Hood County Attorney about the impact of the law on her official responsibilities,Hood County Clerk Katie Lang turned to a private attorney from the Liberty Institute,putting her own personal political goals ahead of her responsibilities to Hood County taxpayers. Clerk Lang’s actions in violation of her legal duties forced our clients to file their lawsuit. Clerk Lang is fortunate that the Hood County Commissioners agreed to resolve the lawsuit now to save her from dealing with the additional expense and significant financial exposure her actions caused the taxpayers of her county.”

And Cato said:

“We are overjoyed that justice was done, and grateful to our lawyers for forcing the County Clerk to follow the law, something she was unwilling to do before our lawyers stepped in to represent us. We are very happy that we finally received our marriage license and were able to celebrate our marriage at our home in Granbury.”

Cato and Stapleton’s attorneys say they’ll donate a portion of their earnings to the Equality Texas Foundation, so Lang can take comfort in knowing her refusal to issuing a same-sex marriage license will ultimately help fund a gay-rights group.

Now, perhaps Lang should put in a call to Clerk Kim Davis in Rowan County, Kentucky, to advise her as to the consequences of violating same-sex couples’ civil rights.

Watch CNN’s report on the case from last month below.

h/t: Dallas Morning News

The post Gay Cowboys Awarded $43K From Texas County Over Denied Marriage License appeared first on Towleroad.

John Wright

Gay Cowboys Awarded $43K From Texas County Over Denied Marriage License

5 Questions for BuzzFeed’s First Trans Reporter

Meredith Talusan is joining BuzzFeed as its first transgendeer staff writer, so our news editor — The Advocate‘s first trans staff member — asked her five questions about herself and the community she’ll be covering.

read more

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/media/2015/08/18/5-questions-buzzfeed-s-first-trans-reporter

EastEnders funeral gay sex scene cleared by UK TV watchdog

An EastEnders gay sex scene in a funeral home was found to not have broken any Ofcom rules, it found today (18 August).

Complaints were made to the UK television watchdog, with many calling these scene from the 17 July episode ‘disgraceful and distasteful’.

It showed Ben Mitchell, played by Harry Reid, and Paul Coker, played by Jonny Labey, having an intimate moment in a funeral home with a dead body on display in an open coffin.

Ofcom  received 76 complaints about the scenes.

While some of the complaints were homophobic in nature, saying that ‘disgusting’ scenes should not be shown on ‘family TV’, others had issues with gay sex being implied to take place in a funeral home.

‘It’s not that it’s two guys having sex in a funeral home that’s distasteful,’ one said. ‘It would still have been a disgrace with two heterosexuals’.

Ofcom said it assessed the complaints but ‘concluded they didn’t raise issues warranting further investigation’.

It added: ‘We found the scenes were justified in the context of a long-running plotline and sexual contact between the characters was implied rather than overt.

‘Our rules don’t discriminate between scenes involving opposite-sex and same-sex couples.’

A BBC spokesperson added: ‘The millions of regular EastEnders fans who tune in each week know and expect dramatic storylines.

‘We are always mindful of our time slot in which we are shown and the scenes in question were implied and not explicit.’

This isn’t the first time viewers have complained over EastEnders. Last year, a gay kiss received a huge amount of backlash on social media but the complaints were largely ignored.

The post EastEnders funeral gay sex scene cleared by UK TV watchdog appeared first on Gay Star News.

Joe Morgan

www.gaystarnews.com/article/eastenders-funeral-gay-sex-scene-cleared-by-uk-tv-watchdog/

Trans woman killed in Kansas after being repeatedly run over

A transgender woman has died in Kansas City after she was repeatedly run over.

Police found Tamara Dominguez, 36, lying unresponsive in a parking lot at 3am on Saturday (15 August) night.

A witness told police that she had got out of a black SUV that then intentionally knocked her down, backed over her and and ran over her again.

Dominguez was rushed to hospital in critical condition but died on Monday.

Friends and family said they did not recognize the vehicle or know who Dominguez might have been with.

‘We understand that maybe they were arguing, but it’s not fair for what he did. It ain’t fair,’ her roommate Juan Rendon told KCTV News.

Authorities are treating the incident as an aggravated assault but said it is too early to say for sure whether the attack was a hate crime.

‘I don’t think it’s fair somebody dies like this no matter what the problem was, what happened. Nobody has the right to kill someone,’ Rendon told KSBH TV.

‘I don’t think people have their mind open, they’re just close-minded. They don’t understand. For some people being transsexual or transgender or gay they think it’s funny.’

Rendon has launched a GoFundMe campaign to send Dominguez’s body to her family in Mexico.

At least 16 other transgender woman have been murdered in the US since the beginning of the year, a historic high according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The post Trans woman killed in Kansas after being repeatedly run over appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-woman-killed-in-kansas-after-being-repeatedly-run-over/

Victim Number 17: Trans Woman of Color Murdered in Missouri

Police in Kansas City are searching for the driver who struck and then repeatedly ran over the Latina trans woman with an SUV.

read more

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/08/18/victim-number-17-trans-woman-color-murdered-missouri

China’s ministry of education sued over textbooks that ‘stigmatize’ gays

A Beijing court on Friday (15 August) accepted a lawsuit against China’s Ministry of Education over textbooks that classify homosexuality as a ‘psychological disorder’ – even though it was removed from the country’s official list of mental illnesses in 2001.

The suit was filled by a 20-year-old Qiu Bai – a student at a university in Guangdong province – after she found many psychology and medical textbooks in her school library that defined homosexuality as a sexual deviation.

One 2013 textbook listed homosexuality as a psychological disorder alongside pedophilia, zoophilia and necrophilia. It also suggested ways the ‘illness’ could be cured, such as ‘aversion therapy’ – which can include electric shock therapy.

Qiu said the teaching materials openly ‘stigmatized’ gay people and had ‘no doubt’ directly harmed the LGBTI community.

‘When I was experiencing an identity crisis, I tried to seek help by consulting these textbooks. But the wrong information has hurt me as well as other students like me,’ she told the Global Times.

Qiu said that she had complained to the local education bureau and the country’s media watchdog, but failed to get a response.

The Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 2001. However, a 2014 survey of psychology textbooks conducted by the Gay and Lesbian Campus Association in China found that 40% of those written after 2001 still classified homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The post China’s ministry of education sued over textbooks that ‘stigmatize’ gays appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/chinas-ministry-of-education-sued-over-textbooks-that-stigmatize-gays/

Tennessee pastor blames a ‘liberal society’ for banning the stoning of gays

A Tennessee pastor is lashing out against a ‘liberal’ society that does not punish homosexuality with stoning.

Ben Bailey, pastor of the Central Church of Christ in McMinnville, can be seen saying in a broadcast of The Gospel of Christ: ‘God does not approve of homosexuality or gay marriage. The scripture says… that is vile, unnatural and deserving of a penalty… It’s an abomination that under the Old Testament deserved stoning.’

Bailey is critical of people today who are looking for a liberal church that doesn’t ‘have any hardcore standards on anything’ and wants to allow females to preach.

‘(God) has a definite standard and it is not the liberal mindset that we see today,’ he says. ‘This book (the Bible) does not condone things like women preaching … If I’m out to please God, we don’t find things like that in the Bible.

‘Is our God, the God of Bible, wanting us to go somewhere where it’s liberal, relaxed views and anything goes? No, that’s the effect of a very liberal society. And we need to make sure that such is not the idea or the mindset of God.’

The post Tennessee pastor blames a ‘liberal society’ for banning the stoning of gays appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/tennessee-pastor-blames-a-liberal-society-for-banning-the-stoning-of-gays/