Obama Makes It Easier for Ex-Cons to Reenter Society

President Obama has issued an executive order designed to ease the transition of former inmates back into society, reports The Atlantic. The order includes a commitment to “ban the box,” essentially stopping federal agencies from asking job applicants about their criminal history with a box that flags them as ex-cons. But advocates say Obama’s order falls short of eliminating the discriminatory practice altogether.
 
The statistics detailing America’s prison problem are staggering:

One in three adults in the U.S. have been arrested by the time they reach 23. 

There are more than 1.5 million Americans incarcerated in state and federal prisons.

LGBT inmates are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison and more likely to spend time in solitary than non-LGBT inmates. 

Each year, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons.Close to 90 percent of all employers in the country conduct background checks. 

Within a year of their release, as many as 60 percent of ex-convicts cannot secure jobs. 

Those who do make 40 percent less money than their colleagues.

Today’s announcement at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice in Newark, N.J., comes after mounting pressure from civil rights groups and prisoners themselves, who sat down with Obama in September during the first visit by a sitting president to a federal penitentiary.  

The executive order requires the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management to take steps to “delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process.” But it does not ban the criminal background question altogether. 

The order comes several months after the president called on employers to eliminate the criminal history question from job applications, and after a protest by “ban the box” advocates in front of the White House.

Washington, D.C., and 19 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia — already have the so-called ban the box laws on the books regarding public employment. Seven states have gone even further: Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island have banned the conviction history question on job applications for private employers, which advocates hope is the next step for the nation as a whole.

All three of the leading Democratic candidates for president support the “ban the box” cause on the campaign trail, as has Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for president who has introduced legislation with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey to seal criminal records for nonviolent offenders. Booker joined the president at today’s announcement. 

The executive order includes other proposals to prevent discrimination based on criminal history, like helping former prisoners apply for public housing and better funding for legal aid programs.

The response from the American Civil Liberties Union was congratulatory but cautious. “This afternoon President Obama announced an important first step toward giving formerly incarcerated men and women who have served their time a fair shot at employment,” said Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director.

“We join him in his desire to make getting a job a real possibility for those with criminal records instead of the impossible dream it is today. The president is intervening in the cruel cycle of mass incarceration and poverty, and we hope that Congress will join the fight with ambitious action.  

“While the president’s pledge to postpone the criminal record check in hiring processes for federal agency jobs to later in the process is an important beginning, we urge him to follow with an Executive Order applying this decision to federal contractors. With that order, the president will delay any consideration of a criminal record until later in the hiring process, thereby giving the recently freed men and women hope to get the jobs they need to provide for their families.” 

Read more about the executive order and the measures announced by President Obama to help promote rehabilitation and reintegration here.

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/crime/2015/11/02/obama-makes-it-easier-ex-cons-reenter-society

First Monday in October 2017
On the first Monday in October, the U.S. Supreme Court commenced a new term. To mark the occasion, Marriage Equality USA sent each of the five Justices who voted in favor of nationwide marriage equality last term a beautiful Rainbow Flag upon which attendees at this summer’s San Francisco Pride Celebration wrote personal messages thanking the Justices for upholding the Constitution.

Although the Court may likely decide important cases this term regarding issues such as women’s reproductive health, voting rights, and affirmative action, we find ourselves contemplating not only the upcoming term, but also the first Monday in October 2017. When that Supreme Court term begins two years from now, a new president will reside in the Oval Office, and she or he could already have appointed at least one Supreme Court Justice. A single vote on the Court has decided many recent landmark decisions, and the next president will likely have a profound role in shaping future decisions that will have huge effects on the LGBT people and all Americans.

The Court’s landmark marriage equality decisions, — the 2013 Windsor decision, striking down DOMA, and the 2015 Obergefell decision, establishing nationwide marriage equality — were both 5-4 decisions with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the majority decision. In future years, the Court may well address other key issues facing LGBT people, including 1) whether the Constitution more broadly protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the same way it guards against discrimination based on race or gender; 2) whether laws that authorize discrimination against LGBT people under the guise of a claim of religious belief are permissible; and 3) whether federal laws that prohibit gender discrimination in employment and public accommodations, such as Title VII, include protection against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

We as voters and participants in the political process can profoundly affect these Court decision that greatly influence our lives by ensuring that the next President is someone who appoints Justices who will uphold the Constitution as the Court did in the Windsor and Obergefell marriage equality decisions. In 1987, a broad coalition of individuals and groups who valued civil rights and liberties organized tirelessly to successfully defeat President Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Robert Bork, an extreme conservative deeply opposed to LGBT equality. The person who became a Justice instead was none other than Anthony Kennedy.

In the 2000 Presidential election, many people bought into the false message that Al Gore and George W. Bush essentially did not differ because among other things Bush was a “compassionate conservative.” Of course, the two differed in many ways, none more clearly than their perspective on the Supreme Court. During the campaign, Bush declared his admiration for arch conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, while Gore looked to former Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Marshall appreciated the Constitution’s role in protecting individual liberty and equality perhaps more than any other Justice in history and argued Brown v. Board of Education when he was an attorney. As president, Bush appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both staunch conservatives, who voted against marriage equality. Roberts and Alito have also provided key votes in many harmful Supreme Court decisions over the last decade, such as Citizens United, that has opened the floodgates to unlimited money pouring into election campaigns.

The 2016 presidential candidates have expressed starkly different positions on the Supreme Court. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her September speech to the Human Rights Campaign warned:

The next president may get three Supreme Court justice appointments. We could lose the Supreme Court, and then there’d be a whole new litigation strategy coming from those who oppose marriage equality.

Senator Bernie Sanders has made a commitment to overturning Citizens United a “litmus test” for any person he nominated for the Court, noting that the decision was “undermining American democracy” and that “billionaires” should not “be allowed to buy politicians.”

On the other hand, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that he would like to remove all of the Justices, except Thomas, Scalia, and Alito. Senator Marco Rubio declared, “We need more Scalias and less Sotomayors,” referring to Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who among other things has voted in favor of marriage equality. Senator Ted Cruz stated at the last Republican debate that the appointment of even the conservative Roberts to the Court “was a mistake.” Former Governor Jeb Bush implicitly criticized the appointments of his own father and brother, Souter and Roberts respectively, by saying, for example, that Roberts “did not did not have a proven, extensive record.” Bush has also stated that he would appoint Justices who “won’t use the bench to legislate,” well-trodden code words for social conservative.

The ultra conservative statements that many Republican candidates have made about Supreme Court Justices comport consistently with their anti-gay rhetoric and their other outspokenly conservative views. Although some of the Republican candidates such as Bush try to speak somewhat more carefully and sometimes offer more nuanced statements about LGBT rights, one should make no mistake as to their approach to the Supreme Court. Their appointments would mirror those of the outspoken Jindal and Cruz. They would appoint very conservative Justices, who would reliably deliver consistent votes against LGBT rights at the Court.

We will face with a stark choice regarding the future of the Supreme Court regardless of whom the two major parties choose as their nominees. We must recognize the primacy of this issue to our lives as LGBT people. We must ensure that when the Supreme Court convenes on the first Monday of October 2017 and for years thereafter a majority of Justices will enforce the liberty and equality guarantees of the Constitution that protect us all. We want to send more Rainbow flags to more Justices, thanking them for upholding the legal rights of LGBT people.

John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for nearly three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. They are leaders in the nationwide grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA.

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Open Question: Can I live my life the way I want, without being rejected?
I live life as a Christian. This automatically has my stance on homsexuality. I honestly don’t care. That doesn’t mean I aoutmatically support it, I just don’t care. But, from what I read, that’s not enough. I want to write things that fall in line with faith as best I can, but I’m scared that the world will reject me, because I don’t mean some LGBT quota. Is it possible for me to live in accordance with my faith without being called homophobe or being rejected?

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151102150031AAb87db

Gay Issues Enter the World of Philanthropy
A withdrawn donation to the Girl Scouts over their inclusion of transgender girls led to an even greater amount of donations.

NY Times Editorial Board: ‘Houston Residents Should Not Succumb to Ugly Fearmongering’

The Grey Lady is throwing her weight behind Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance with an op-ed calling on Houston to vote “yes” on Proposition 1 tomorrow.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/ny-times-editorial-board-houston-residents-should-not-succumb-to-ugly-fearm?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Openly Gay Mayor Jim Gray Denies Being Involved With KKK, Calls Accusations “Ridiculous”

This morning, the hackitivist group Anonymous “unhooded” several prominent U.S. Senators and mayors who it claims are members of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the alleged “White Knights” is none other than the openly gay Democratic mayor of Lexington, KY, Jim Gray.

Related: The KKK Is Rebranding, Gays and Blacks Are Now Welcome

62-year-old Grey came out publicly in 2005 while running for vice mayor of Lexington. In 2010, he became the city’s first openly gay mayor. And in 2014, he was re-elected for a second term.

Related: WATCH: Mother Defends Son’s KKK Costume, Says Man Should Be With Woman

This morning, Gray took to Twitter to deny any involvement with the KKK:

This allegation from the group Anonymous is false, insulting and ridiculous. I have never had any relationship of any kind with the KKK.

— Mayor Jim Gray (@JimGrayLexKY) November 2, 2015

He followed that up with a second tweet a few minutes later:

I am opposed to everything the KKK stands for. I have no idea where this information came from, but wherever it came from, it is wrong. — Mayor Jim Gray (@JimGrayLexKY) November 2, 2015

He also posted the following statement to his official Facebook page:

Brenna Angel, a spokeswoman for Gray’s office, told the Lexington Herald-Leader they are “at a total loss” as to how the mayor’s name ended up on the list.

Related: The KKK Is, Wait For It, Very Unhappy About Gay Marriage In Alabama

Supporters of Gray were quick to come to his defense.

“I’ve known Mayor Gray and his family all of my life,” Rita Riherd wrote on Facebook. “This is absolutely the most ridiculous accusation.”

“Such an allegation could not be further from the truth,” Joe Terry added. “Jim Gray stand [sic] for all those things that the KKK traditionaly [sic] opposes.”

“I have known Jim since I have been in Lexington, worked with him on numerous occasions, and consider him a good friend,” Jim Alexander said. “I have seen his tireless work for equality for all of Lexington’s citizens no matter of color orientation or background or ethnicity.”

Other lawmakers outed by Anonymous for allegedly being involved with the KKK include U.S. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, Dan Coats of Indiana, and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, as well as mayors Madeline Rogero of Knoxville, TN; Paul D. Fraim of Norfolk, VA; Kent Guinn of Ocala, FL; and Tom Henry of Fort Wayne, IN.

Related: The KKK Would Like You To Join Them In Ending AIDS By Killing Gay People

h/t: Heavy

Graham Gremore

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Cruz, Huckabee And Jindal Will Join Pastor Who Wants Gays Put To Death
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Cruz, Huckabee And Jindal Will Join Pastor Who Wants Gays Put To Death
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Steve Grand Had a Big, Gay Shirtless Halloween: PHOTOS

Out gay singer Steve Grand celebrated Halloween in LA, and from the looks of his Instagram account, it was a mostly shirtless affair.

Grand attended LA’s gay Halloween event, Halloweenie, which benefits the Gay Men’s Chorus of LA. Grand dressed up as a sexy and shirtless jazz age gangster, accompanied by other shirtless gay mafiosos. The first picture he shared, below, was captioned, “Happy Gay Christmas! Stick em up!”

During the party, he encountered some shirtless men from a different historical era.

As well as other known gay personalities.

And even a masked vigilante.

After the party, it was time for the after-party. Which looked awful.

Definitely unbearable.

“The worst.”

Max Emerson was also there. Convincing us that he actually has narcolepsy. Max, buddy, get some help?

In conclusion, it appears that all the shirts in Los Angeles were burned on Halloween. And Steve Grand may have been the one to burn them.

[h/t Instinct]

The post Steve Grand Had a Big, Gay Shirtless Halloween: PHOTOS appeared first on Towleroad.

Sean Mandell

Steve Grand Had a Big, Gay Shirtless Halloween: PHOTOS

Gays Who Adopted Partners Need Annulments, Senator Says

Bob Casey, Pennsylvania’s Democratic senior senator, wants to right a wrong that’s affecting numerous same-sex couples — the inability to obtain annulments for couples in which one partner adopted the other before the days of marriage equality.

This was a common practice in the mid-20th century, as adoption offered legal protections for same-sex partners when it came to matters like hospital visiting privileges and inheritance laws. But now with marriage equality, some couples in this situation are finding it difficult to annul their adoptions so they can legally wed. 

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Casey writes of a couple in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County who were denied their adoption annulment request in July. The judge stated that adoption annulments can only be granted in cases of fraud and reversing them in other instances would place all adoptions in jeopardy. Because of the ruling, the couple cannot marry, since they would be guilty of incest and could face 10 years in prison. The situation is not exclusive to the Allegheny County couple.

Casey wants Lynch to issue guidance to courts across the country on the matter so that same-sex couples in this situation can easily annul their adoption and enter into a legal marriage.

“Prior decisions such as the one made in Bucks County, Pennsylvania may provide the legal foundation for such guidance,” Casey writes. “LGBT couples should have the right to obtain a marriage license, no matter the state or jurisdiction in which they reside. As you know, Justice Anthony Kennedy described the request of same sex couples in Obergefell as “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.” In adoption cases such as these, the law has changed dramatically since the adoptions were first carried out. To ensure the dignity of all LGBT couples is affirmed no matter their current adoption status, we must ensure that all parties know their options under the law. I appreciate your attention in this matter and look forward to your response.”

Neal Broverman

www.advocate.com/marriage-equality/2015/11/02/gays-who-adopted-each-other-need-annulments-senator-says