It's Official: Salt Lake City Elects Lesbian Mayor, Jackie Biskupski

It’s official: Salt Lake City has elected a lesbian mayor.

Unofficial totals showed Jackie Biskupski besting incumbent Ralph Becker November 3, but the vote count wasn’t finalized until today, after a canvass — and it shows her with 51.5 percent of the vote to Becker’s 48.5 percent, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. Becker had refused to concede until the official count was announced.

While Salt Lake City is home to the headquarters of the famously conservative Mormon Church, its local politics trend progressive. While Biskupski is the first LGBT person to be elected mayor there, or in any major city in the state, she isn’t the first liberal Democrat — Becker also proudly claimed that designation, as did a previous mayor, Rocky Anderson. City races are nonpartisan.

During their campaign, Biskupski and Becker, who had served two terms, generally voiced agreement on their goals for the city, such as improving public transportation, fighting crime, and reducing homelessness, with some differences over how to accomplish them.

In a news conference today, Biskupski praised Becker, saying, “His actions and programs have benefited Salt Lake City,” the Tribune reports. She said she is forming a transition team that will take input from city employees to assure a smooth change in administrations when she is sworn in January 4.

“City employees wanted strong leadership that made them feel they were being listened to,” she said at the news conference. “We need to meet with existing staff and figure out how to move forward.”

This is the second “first” for Biskupski; she also was the first LGBT person elected to the Utah legislature, winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1998. She ended up serving seven terms. Before entering politics, she was an insurance claims investigator.

Biskupski’s win is “historic,” said Equality Utah executive director Troy Williams. “Her victory sends a powerful message to all LGBTQ Utahns that their sexual orientation will never be a limitation to public service. We look forward to working alongside Mayor-elect Biskupski to advance policies that will benefit all Utahns.”

Today’s official vote count also affirmed Derek Kitchen’s election to a seat on the City Council. Kitchen was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that brought marriage equality to Utah. He becomes the second openly gay member of the City Council, joining Stan Penfold.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/11/17/its-official-salt-lake-city-elects-lesbian-mayor-jackie-biskupski

Anti-gay Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ends bid for Republican presidential nomination

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Tuesday (17 November) dropped out of the crowded race for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

‘I don’t think in a million years they would have ever imagined that I’d be governor or one day I’d be running for president of the United States,’ he said in a statement. ‘I’ve come to the realization this is not my time.’

Jindal’s poll numbers were consistently low and in four televised debates, he had yet to appear on the main debate stage with such contenders as Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

Jindal had been relegated to an earlier undercard debate with other low-polling rivals such as Rick Santorum.

When the US Supreme Court ruled last June that same-sex marriage would now be legal in all 50 states, Jindal blasted the high court and said: ‘Marriage between a man and a woman was established by God, and no earthly court can alter that.’

A month earlier, Jindal had issued an executive order allowing businesses to turn away LGBTI customers, two hours after a state House panel rejected a ‘religious freedom’ bill.

Jindal then became one of four presidential candidates to have signed a pledge last summer to overturn the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gay marriage if elected in 2016.

He had joined Ted Cruz, Santorum and Carson in signing the National Organization for Marriage’s pledge. In doing so they vowed to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage and reverse the US Supreme Court’s ‘illegitimate’ decision.

They also promised to ban the promotion of the ‘redefined version of marriage’ in schools, and direct the justice department to investigate cases where anti-gay marriage activists have been ‘harassed or threatened,’ proposing new protections if needed.

The post Anti-gay Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ends bid for Republican presidential nomination appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/anti-gay-louisiana-governor-bobby-jindal-ends-bid-for-republican-presidential-nomination/

Bobby Jindal Drops Out, Failing to Win Over Social Conservatives

Having never broke out of the bottom of polling, or out of the undercard debating group, Bobby Jindal dropped out of the race for president today. 

“This is not my time,” the Louisiana governor wrote in a goodbye letter on Facebook and elsewhere. 

During his short run, Jindal competed heartily to win the mantle of social conservatives. His state was among the last to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court ruled in June, not relenting until ordered to by three separate courts. 

He also is one of three Republicans to appear at the Religious Liberties Conference — dubbed by some as the “kill the gays rally” — hosted in Iowa this month by antigay pastor Kevin Swanson. Along with Texas senator Ted Cruz and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Jindal shared the stage with Swanson, who pontificated enthusiastically about the extermination of gays and lesbians. 

Fighting for so-called religious liberty was a cornerstone of Jindal’s case for becoming president. 

After lawmakers in his state failed to pass a religious freedom bill akin to the one that failed in Indiana, Jindal went ahead on his own and issued an executive order barring Louisiana from penalizing any worker who acted in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage. He earned headlines early on for an op-ed in The New York Times that condemned changes made to the RFRA in Indiana, saying LGBT activists were trying “to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty.”

In announcing his candidacy in June, Jindal warned that “Christianity is under assault in America.” Then on the campaign trail he touted the endorsement of Duck Dynasty family members. And in his note to supporters today, Jindal reiterated his concern that the United States is on the wrong track.

“Now is the time for all those Americans who still believe in freedom and American exceptionalism to stand up and defend it,” he said. “The idea of America — the idea that my parents came here for almost a half a century ago — that idea is slipping away from us. Freedom is under assault from both outside our borders and from within. We must act now, we do not have a moment to spare.”

Lucas Grindley

www.advocate.com/election/2015/11/17/bobby-jindal-drops-out-failing-win-over-social-conservatives

Yale President Unveils Plan To Deal With Racial Tensions On Campus

Yale University President Peter Salovey announced Tuesday a series of steps the Ivy League institution will take in an attempt to better support minority students.

Salovey further emphasized that responding to concerns from marginalized communities does not mean the university has to suppress free speech, and said that nobody’s going to be punished for sharing their opinion. 

It is clear that Yale needs to “reaffirm and reinforce our commitment to a campus where hatred and discrimination have no place,” Salovey said in a campus-wide email. But, he added, the institution also needs to lay to rest “the claim that it conflicts with our commitment to free speech, which is unshakeable.”

“The very purpose of our gathering together into a university community is to engage in teaching, learning, and research — to study and think together, sometimes to argue with and challenge one another, even at the risk of discord, but always to take care to preserve our ability to learn from one another,” Salovey wrote. 

Yale become a hotbed of protest this month following allegations that a fraternity discriminated against women of color — something the members vehemently deny. Tensions were further inflamed by an email from an administrator that questioned whether warning students not to wear offensive costumes was going too far, something some students felt was insensitive to minorities on campus.

Students demonstrated after the incidents, saying those examples speak to larger concerns about how marginalized students are treated at the New Haven, Connecticut, campus. 

“Yale’s long history, even in these past two weeks, has shown a steadfast devotion to full freedom of expression,” Salovey continued. “No one has been silenced or punished for speaking their minds, nor will they be. This freedom, which is the bedrock of education, equips us with the fullness of mind to pursue our shared goal of creating a more inclusive community.”

Salovey then laid out a series of steps the university will take. Here are some of them: 

• Yale will create a multidisciplinary university center supporting scholarship around race, ethnicity and other aspects of social identity. The university will add four additional faculty positions to contribute to existing research from Yale professors around “unrepresented” and “under-represented” communities. 
• Yale will launch a five-year series of conferences on issues of race, gender, inequality and inclusion.
• Yale will double the budgets for the four campus cultural centers. 
• All mental health professionals on campus will receive multicultural training.
• The university will announce new details on improving financial aid for low-income students, but in the meantime is making funds available for students in emergency situations.  
• All members of the administration, including Salovey, will receive training on “recognizing and combating racism and other forms of discrimination in the academy.”
• The university will continue with its $50 million effort to expand diversity among faculty.

Peter Salovey’s entire email can be read here.

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Caitlyn Jenner says she still plans to vote Republican

Caitlyn Jenner was in Iowa last weekend with camera crews for her reality show I Am Cait and wanted to get a ticket into the Democratic presidential debate.

But that doesn’t mean the transgender reality star is going to be voting for a Democrat in the next presidential election.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Jenner watched the debate with students on the campus of Drake University.

‘They didn’t convince me,’ Jenner said of Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley.

Jenner’s request for a ticket inside was unsuccessful despite it reaching CBS News President David Rhodes.

Rhodes tells The Times: ‘Our person told her person that we don’t have any tickets left, which happens to be factual.’

Jenner has been widely criticized by many in the lGBTI community for supporting a political party that has largely fought against equality and protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The post Caitlyn Jenner says she still plans to vote Republican appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/caitlyn-jenner-says-she-still-plans-to-vote-republican/

Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus Announces Transgender Equality Task Force

The Task Force is chaired by Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), who has a transgender granddaughter.  Also on the Task Force is Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who has a transgender son.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/congressional-lgbt-equality-caucus-announces-transgender-equality-task-forc?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Caitlyn Jenner Still Plans to Vote Republican in 2016

Caitlyn Jenner was in Des Moines, Iowa on Saturday and hoped to attend the Democratic Debate, according to a story in the L.A. Times about CBS News director John Dickerson, and the last minute changes that needed to be made to the debate following the Paris attacks.

Jenner is a Republican, a fact that was much discussed during her coming out as transgender, when many questioned how she could support a party which shows so little support for, and often active hatred towards LGBT people.

When interviewed about her desire to attend the Democratic Debate, Jenner told the L.A. Times that she still plans to vote for a Donald Trump or a Ben Carson or someone else in the GOP clown car:

There were minor decisions to be attended to as well. Caitlyn Jenner, who as Bruce Jenner was a Drake Relays champion in 1976, was in Des Moines visiting the university campus with her reality show producers. Although a Republican, she asked for a ticket to the debate. The request went all the way up to CBS News President David Rhodes.

“Our person told her person that we don’t have any tickets left, which happens to be factual.” Rhodes said.

(Jenner told The Times that she did not get into the debate hall but that she was able to watch it on television with students on the Drake University campus. She said she still planned to vote Republican. “They didn’t convince me,” she said.)

In related news, Jenner has been criticized for being named Glamour’s Woman of the Year, most viciously by actress Rose McGowan, who lambasted her in a since-deleted Facebook post:

“Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is about at all. You want to be a woman and stand with us- well learn us. We are more than deciding what to wear. We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you. You’re a woman now? Well f**king learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege. Woman of the year? No, not until you wake up and join the fight. Being a woman comes with a lot of baggage. The weight of unequal history. You’d do well to learn it. You’d do well to wake up. Woman of the year? Not by a long f**king shot.”

(h/t/ world of wonder)

The post Caitlyn Jenner Still Plans to Vote Republican in 2016 appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

Caitlyn Jenner Still Plans to Vote Republican in 2016

Antonin Scalia: If We Protect Gays, Why Not Child Molesters?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is famed for his archconservative views and often-homophobic rhetoric, but he took it up a notch even for him Monday, saying the logic behind making LGBT people a protected minority could just as easily apply to child molesters.

Scalia, speaking to first-year law students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said there is no constitutional basis for gay rights decisions made by the court, The New York Times reports. “What minorities deserve protection?” he asked. “What? It’s up to me to identify deserving minorities?”

Those decisions should be made by the people and their elected representatives, he said, not judges. He “allowed that the First Amendment protects political and religious minorities but suggested that there was no principled way for courts to make further distinctions based on the text of the Constitution,” the Times reports.

“What about pederasts?” he asked, with some sarcasm. “What about child abusers? So should I on the Supreme Court say this is a deserving minority. Nobody loves them. … No, if you believe in democracy, you should put it to the people.”

He also said, “The notion that everything you care a lot about has to be in the Constitution is a very dangerous notion,” The Washington Post reports. “It begins with stuff that we all agree upon … and at the bottom of that slope is same-sex marriage.”

There was some swift reaction to Scalia’s comments. New Republic blogger Jeet Heer called the remarks “breathtaking in their bigotry” and wrote, “Apparently you can be a Supreme Court justice without being able to understand the elementary distinction between consensual relationships between adults and heinous acts that by definition are coercive.”

In his dissents on Supreme Court decisions regarding LGBT rights, Scalia has often argued for the right of the people to assert opposition to homosexuality through discriminatory laws. In his dissent in 1996’s Romer v. Evans, which struck down an antigay Colorado ballot measure, he wrote that the measure was “a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws.”

In 2003, in dissenting from the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, which invalidated antisodomy laws, he advocated for the rights of Americans who “do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home” because “they view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”

You can read more of Scalia’s greatest antigay hits here.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/11/17/antonin-scalia-if-we-protect-gays-why-not-child-molesters

Transgender State Legislator: Not This Time
When Kansas State Representative Harold Lane announced his retirement, I didn’t hesitate to make it known that I planned to try become the nominee to fill his unexpired term. November 14, the six Democratic precinct committee members for Kansas House District 58 gathered together to make that nomination. It went to Reverend Ben Scott. Governor Brownback will now make an appointment to fill this seat in the Kansas Legislature.

There is much more to this story than a transgender woman from Topeka not being selected as the nominee. It was not a difficult decision for me to place my name into consideration for this seat. I have long had my eye on the right opportunity to come along. This one certainly had all the earmarks of the right opportunity.

Far more took place in that room than just the six precinct committee member electing a nominee. When Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle ran a story on this little election, it was picked up by The Associate Press and went out coast to coast. It was also picked up by newspapers across Kansas.

Perhaps the most important thing I set out to do was to give a few young people, who happen to be transgender, some hope that they could live authentically and make it in this world. I’m thinking that we — me and all the other marginalized people who stand up and claim our dignity — are making a difference. The door has been opened. It can never be closed again. Speaking loudly and clearly I say to you, You can more than make it in this world. You can make this world a place where we don’t have to wonder if we can live authentically.

I got to give a speech before the election. A lot of people were there who didn’t really know much about me. Now they do. Several of these people, leaders in the community, came up to me after the meeting and shared how much they appreciated what I had to say. Amazing things will come out of this. Multiple requests have already been made for me to share about my journey.

I have learned in the last several years that when I put good stuff out to the universe, good stuff comes back to me. I am extremely excited to see what good stuff will come from this. I am certain of one thing, the universe knows exactly where I am supposed to be. It is leading constantly to that precise place and I will arrive at the precise time I am supposed to arrive.

A couple weeks ago, I registered for the final two classes to achieve my Master of Social Work degree from Washburn University. If I had been appointed to the Kansas House of Representatives, I would have needed to postpone my MSW by as much as a year and a half. I couldn’t have been at my MSW practicum, and at the State Capitol at the same time. I knew, going into this, that no matter what happened, it was good.

I shook Rev. Scott’s hand on the way out of the meeting and offered my congratulations. In the speech he gave before the election, he talked about justice for all people. I am concerned that Rev. Scott does not believe justice for all people translates in to laws that make it illegal to discriminate against LGBT people. I could be wrong. If not, you can expect me to step up again.

Finally, I believe that every time we get the word transgender into a newspaper in Kansas, we bump the football a little bit down the field; a little closer to the goal line. We didn’t lose. We bumped the football far enough down the field to get a first down. We have a new set of downs and we still have the ball.

The end of this story is not yet written. In the course of this experience, I was asked several times what it would mean to be the first transgender woman elected to the Kansas Legislature. My response has been to say, We need to get to a place where we don’t have to recognize the first of any population to achieve something; a place where the legislature in Kansas is representative of the diversity in Kansas. Touchdown.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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