Justice, Justice, We Shall Pursue

Some of the many who fought hard for passage of the MA Transgender Rights Bill:
Arline Isaacson, Jennifer Levi, Carly Burton, Gavi Wolfe, Rep. Carl Sciortino, Gunner Scott and Kara Suffredini. Photo by Chris Riley.

Jennifer L. Levi, GLAD's Transgender Rights Project Director,
on passage of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill in Massachusetts:

I am new to tweeting as anyone can tell. Technological neophyte that I am, I committed to learning it, though, because of several recent chances I’ve had to be on the front lines of civil rights advances. I want to be sure that members of our community who can’t leave their obligations to rush to our state capitals get the minute-to-minute updates and details of how the hard work of social justice is unfolding.

So when I got the call on Monday afternoon at my office in Easthampton that the bill our coalition had worked on for nearly a decade (if you count the early work on the Boston ordinance as the foundation), I knew I’d have to tweet the progress and developments around the bill. After a long day of legislative developments, I sent out a tweet last night at close to 6 p.m. about the mackerel that sits atop the huge chandelier above the Senate Gallery. I knew my colleague Laura Kiritsy was right when she texted me, “it’s time for you to go home.”

Still, it had been a wild ride of a day. I defied her suggestion, staying just a few minutes more for final enactment by the Senate. I was sitting with Gavi Wolfe, legal counsel for the ACLU and just behind Ken and Marcia Gerber as well as Liz Monnin-Browder’s mom, when it happened. It was all over - the Transgender Equal Rights Bill had passed. It was headed to the governor’s desk where we know he will enthusiastically sign it.

We all left the Senate gallery and walked downstairs to welcome and thank our champions. Senator Chang-Diaz walked out first. She hugged Ken and Marcia Garber and invited all of the supporters to come onto the floor of the Senate to hear some final remarks. Senator Chang Diaz poignantly talked about Ken and Marcia’s son CJ who was transgender and whose life succumbed to the bigotry and hatred of a society that does not yet fully and completely respect the dignity and sanctity of transgender people’s lives. Everyone in the chamber – senators, aides, staff, and clerks – then rose to applaud Ken and Marcia and all the activists and advocates who had put in thousands of hours at the statehouse and beyond to educate legislators and the community, necessary work to get to where we did in final passage of the bill. It was an amazing day. I knew it and could feel it in my heart and exhausted body.

Still the victory was bittersweet. The bill we got passed includes essential protections for the community. It includes the hate crimes protections we need to combat violence. It rewrites the laws in the Commonwealth to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, credit, lending, and in our k-12 public schools to protect our youth. It admits of no exceptions in these areas. Employees are fully protected; students are fully protected; tenants and credit applicants are fully protected. We’d not allowed our opponents to cut out protections for anyone in our community. The bill does NOT require that you meet any particular definition of what it means to be transgender to be protected nor does it exclude any particular spaces within those areas of protection. I feel proud of that.

And yet, and yet, the bill is not complete. It is not perfect. It passed without important protections for transgender people in the public sphere. Because too many legislators were not yet ready to deal with the full reality of our lives, the bill came out of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary without public accommodations protections.

Contrary to popular belief, public accommodations protections are not solely about bathrooms and locker rooms (which are important, to be sure). Public accommodations refers to any facility – stores, restaurants, movie theatres, malls, for example – that opens itself up to the public for the purpose of providing goods or services. And, like the employment, education, housing, credit, lending, and anti-violence provisions of the bill that passed, the public accommodations provisions are also essential to the community. We fought like hell to keep them in, then hoped against hope that our legislative champions could get them put back in as the bill progressed from House to Senate. They could not.

As I made the 2 hour trip west to my home last night in the pouring rain, I kept hearing the refrain from Deuteronomy in my mind over and over and over again. Justice, justice, you must pursue. Justice, justice, you must pursue. Yesterday was a huge victory at the statehouse. It came after years of hard work by many, many, many people and many, many, many organizations. Those of us working together on this issue have become like a family. Sometimes we get along, sometimes we don’t. We agree on a lot of things, and disagree on some. We banded together and forged a strong community to get more rights for the transgender community than we had before yesterday’s historic votes. There is more work to do. I know we are all committed not to rest until that work is complete.

Justice, justice, we shall pursue.

Discrimination on the basis of HIV status persists

Post by GLAD Senior Legal Assistant Joseph Wildey

GLAD recently provided assistance to a man charged with a serious crime—who spent over a month in jail as a result—simply because he is HIV-positive. Since then, I have been thinking about the necessity of education, particularly when it aims to dispel wholly unfounded beliefs.

In fifth grade, my teacher integrated health, fitness, and disease, including the sexually transmitted variety, into the curriculum. Classroom giggles aside, the lessons were informative; they taught me to maintain a cautious yet balanced perspective on prevention.

I remember learning that certain diseases were contagious, but not contagious like the common cold. A person needed to engage in more than just casual contact in order to transmit HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

And what about shaking hands, or sharing a drinking glass with someone who is HIV-positive? Those are both perfectly safe activities with no risk of transmission, I learned. I could even hug someone who was HIV-positive, and express affection through kissing, without fear of becoming infected.

Such instruction prepared me for a world outside of school where I would undoubtedly meet and interact with people who were HIV-positive. Rather than experiencing fear in such an instance, and expressing that fear through bias or discrimination, I would be informed and open-minded.

Unfortunately, when asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “HIV can be transmitted through saliva as a result of sharing a drinking glass with someone who is HIV-positive,” sixteen percent of Americans agreed, as shown in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

Another thirty percent of those surveyed believed that kissing someone who is HIV-positive can also lead to infection.

Yet while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has said conclusively that HIV cannot be transmitted via saliva, the public misconceptions surrounding HIV persist in the third decade of the epidemic.

These unfounded beliefs fuel pervasive stigma and discrimination in society, as demonstrated by continued criminal prosecutions of HIV-positive individuals.

This past summer, I provided assistance as GLAD successfully interceded in an HIV-related criminal prosecution in Connecticut. The incident involved a person from Massachusetts who was charged with serious felonies as a result of spitting on a law enforcement official during an arrest.

The inflated charges, which included assault on a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon, and criminal mischief, were solely based on the fact that the individual who spit on the official identified himself as being HIV-positive during the incident.

In this scenario, HIV transmission could not have occurred, as anyone privy to the lessons taught in my fifth grade classroom would have known.

The prosecutors viewed this person’s HIV, and the fact that he had spit on the officer, as assault with a deadly weapon, despite clear scientific evidence that saliva is not a mode of HIV transmission.

Fortunately, the charges were eventually reduced, but only after GLAD, while working with the person’s public defender, marshaled an array of medical experts and advocated with public officials in order to refute the charges and secure this person’s release.

Other HIV-positive individuals have not been as fortunate. Nationwide, criminal prosecutions for similar incidents where the risk of transmission is zero are astoundingly common.

In the United States, groups like The Center for HIV Law & Policy have compiled non-exhaustive lists of at least 118 prosecutions and arrests for HIV exposure between 2008 and 2011. Many of the cases listed involve nondisclosure of a person’s HIV-positive status during a sexual encounter; however, a sizeable number of prosecutions and arrests were the result of spitting or biting.

One of the more egregious prosecutions occurred in Texas in 2008, when an HIV-positive homeless man was sentenced to 35 years in prison as a result of spitting; his saliva was viewed as a deadly weapon in that case.

The continued prosecution of HIV-positive individuals can be linked to the fear and outright hostility that characterized the beginning of the epidemic. The residual effects of this stigma and discrimination still affect HIV-positive individuals, especially those interacting with the criminal justice system.

GLAD’s AIDS Law Project was founded in 1984, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and more than ten years before I learned the importance of choosing facts over fear. GLAD continues to educate people about misconceptions surrounding HIV-positive individuals and to ensure that policies are based on science.

However, as this experience in Connecticut illustrates, there is still much work to be done.

In case you missed it: Bay Windows coverage of Spirit of Justice

This week's Bay Windows has a great front page story on our wonderful Governor Deval Patrick and his family, who will accept GLAD's Spirit of Justice Award at our annual Spirit of Justice Award Dinner in exactly one week! There is not a family who is more deserving of this honor. They're the real deal when it comes to working toward full equality for the LGBT community.

Full disclosure: I wrote the story, so of course I think it's great, but I hope you will, too. It's a longer version of a story that originally ran in our Summer Briefs back in June, so if you think you've already it, there's more to the story. Go read it and let me know what you think.

'We’re all in this together'
GLAD to honor Mass. First Family with Spirit of Justice Award
http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=massachusetts&sc2=news&sc3=&id=125710

Parents: Pledge to Protect LGBT Families

Join parents across the country in taking the pledge to support the standards for LGBT families:

1) Support the Rights of LGBT Parents.
2) Honor Existing Relationships Regardless of Legal Labels.
3) Honor the Children’s Existing Parental Relationships After a Break-Up.
4) Maintain Continuity For the Children.
5) Seek a Voluntary Resolution.
6) Remember That Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.
7) Investigate Allegations Of Abuse.
8) The Absence of Agreements or Legal Relationships Should Not Determine Outcome.
9) Treat Litigation as a Last Resort.
10) Refuse to Resort to Homophobic/Transphobic Laws and Sentiments.

KISS 108 makes up for anti-trans comments with pro-trans bill PSA

This post comes at the risk of further confusing folks who are already confused about the difference between GLAD and our friends at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, also known as GLAAD (or "Double-A GLAAD" to our "Single-A GLAD"). For the record, GLAD is a legal organization. GLAAD works to promote positive and accurate representations of LGBT people in the media.

With that out of the way, GLAAD did some great work with KISS 108 after some anti-trans on-air comments were made in response to the announcement of Chaz Bono's Dancing with the Stars gig. Justin Ward, GLAAD's media field strategist, reached out KISS 108 and the result was that the station agreed to air a free public service announcement (PSA) in support of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill, which would add protections for transgender people to our state's non-discrimination and hate crimes laws. GLAAD and members of the Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Coalition -- including GLAD -- worked up a script that gets at the heart of why the Transgender Equal Rights Bill needs to be passed during this legislative session.

I've posted the first half of a post on this effort from GLAAD's blog. Read on for more details about this good news and follow the link at the bottom to hear the PSA.

GLAAD OUTREACH LEADS TO TRANSGENDER EDUCATION ON BOSTON'S KISS 108

Friday, September 23, 2011 - 5:17pm by Christopher Santorella, GLAAD's Media Field Strategy Intern

Transgender visibility is on the rise nationwide, thanks in large part to Chaz Bono becoming the first openly transgender contestant on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Yet, even with recent breakthroughs in transgender visibility, his presence on the hit show was met with both positive and negative reactions in the media. In particular, GLAAD learned of disparaging comments made on Boston’s KISS 108 radio morning show, which boasts an average of almost 670,000 listeners weekly. Taking KISS 108’s top-rated listenership and community influence into consideration, GLAAD reached out to the Clear Channel station in the wake of the comments made.

Jim Clerkin, the producer of ‘Matty in the Morning,’ and Mary Menna, President & Marketing Manager for Clear Channel, were the first to hear from GLAAD on the issue. Through a series of correspondence, GLAAD, in conjunction with Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Coalition (MassEquality, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders - GLAD, and more), was offered a series of free 15-second public service announcements by KISS 108, Boston’s #1 rated radio station. Through swift and effective outreach GLAAD successfully brought about tangible results in the form of public education about transgender people, the discrimination they face, and the need for protections. The PSA campaign, which will air at various times throughout the day on the station, comes at a pivotal time for Massachusetts transgender equality.

Read the rest of this post and listen to the PSA here.

Know Your Rights: You Don’t Need to Divorce Where You Married

Now that marriage for same-sex couples has been available for over 7 years and civil unions have been available for over 11 years, the Legal InfoLine is receiving an increasing number of calls from couples who need to end their relationship. Many of the callers think that their only option is to return to the place where they entered into their relationship. Although same-sex couples do not have the same flexibility to end a relationship as different-sex couples, they do not always have to return to the place where they entered into the relationship.

For different-sex married couples, it is usually possible for the couple to divorce where they are currently living regardless of where they originally married. The reason for this is that for the most part, states respect the marriages of different-sex couples regardless of where the couple married. If a place respects the marriage, provided the couple meets the divorce residency requirements in that locale, they will be allowed to divorce where they currently live.

The complication for same-sex couples is that only certain places respect the marriages or civil unions of same-sex couples, and so you need to live in one of those places to be able to dissolve the relationship.

If you have a same-sex marriage, regardless of where you married, you will be able to dissolve it in places where same-sex couples can legally marry (i.e. MA, CT, NH, VT, IA, DC, NY), provided you meet the residency requirements for that place's divorce law. There may also be some additional states that, although they do not allow same-sex couples to marry, do respect the marriages of same-sex couple, at least for the purpose of divorce.

For couples in civil unions, the civil union can be dissolved in any state that had a civil union at some point, even though they may not now offer civil unions (i.e. VT, CT, NH, NJ, RI, IL and, effective January 1, 2012, DE and HI). Also states with domestic partnerships that offer nearly all the benefits of marriage like CA, OR, WA and NV also will likely dissolve a civil union. In addition, even places that offer marriage for same-sex couples may be willing to dissolve civil unions as well, but possibly using a legal procedure different from divorce (e.g. MA has dissolved civil unions under equity law). However, in all of the above, you will most likely still need to satisfy a residency requirement before the state has jurisdiction to dissolve your civil union.

For either ending a marriage or a civil union it only takes one member of the couple to file for the dissolution of the relationship, and so only one member of the couple needs to live in a place that respects the relationship, and only one member of the couple needs to meet the residency requirement for ending the relationship.

Although this seems (and is) rather complex, the bottom line is that if you wish to end either a marriage or a civil union don’t assume that the only way to do it is to return to the place where you entered into it. If you live in one of the New England states, contact GLAD’s Legal InfoLine at 800-455-4523 to find out about your options, and, if you live outside New England, contact Lambda Legal (go to www.lambdalegal.org to see the contact information for their regional offices).

When Love Doesn’t Make a Family

It’s often said that nothing compares to the pain of losing a child. Usually, it’s meant in the context of death, but for the countless LGBT people who have lost a relationship with their child or children because of hostile courts and /or ex-partners, that pain can be just as acute.

That’s why this week, GLAD, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and NCLR’s National Family Law Advisory Council released a revised version of Protecting Families: Standards for LGBT Families, a set of 10 guidelines aimed at reminding LGBT people how important it is to legally protect the families they create and to caution parents against wielding anti-LGBT laws against their partner should their relationship break-up. Basically, we’re calling on the members of our community -- and their lawyers -- to fight fairly and to do their best to avoid damaging custody disputes. As GLAD’s Mary Bonauto writes in her introduction to the standards, “We believe that, even in the midst of the emotional upheaval that inevitably accompanies the end of the adult relationship, families can do a great deal to resolve their differences in a manner that puts their children first.”

I wrote about the issue of same-sex custody disputes back in 2005 for Bay Windows newspaper. Honestly, it was one of the worst experiences of my 11-year journalism career. To put it bluntly, the subject matter was revolting.

In the newsroom we referred to these bitter battles with the shorthand “lesbians behaving badly.” It’s not that we believed they were behaving badly because they were lesbians – clearly, they were just people that had lost sight of their children’s best interests as straight parents certainly do, but for some reason nearly all of these cases involve women and nearly all of them follow a sadly similar plot: A couple in a committed relationship creates a family either biologically or through adoption and holds themselves out to the world as a two-parent family – even if their state doesn’t legally recognize their relationship or allow both parents to create a legal relationship with the child via second-parent adoption or some other mechanism. When the relationship ultimately ends (usually badly) the legally recognized mother attempts to cut her ex out of their child’s life by arguing in court that her ex has no legal rights as a parent – or in the worst cases, that her ex is not and never was a parent at all.

In one of the more notorious cases, GLAD represented Janet Jenkins, whose ex-partner Lisa Miller, now an evangelical Christian and “ex-gay,” has waged a particularly ugly battle to keep Janet from their daughter, Isabella. When the courts ultimately awarded Janet custody of the child after years of Lisa’s obstructionism, Lisa kidnapped Isabella and fled the country; she remains at large.

In another case that I wrote about, a parent characterized her ex-partner as merely performing “caretaking functions” for their child while the parent worked outside the home. Keri Lynn Jones, a non-biological mom from Utah that I wrote about, recalled her lawyer telling her she needed to itemize every penny she had ever spent on her daughter in an effort to prove to the court she had acted as the child’s parent. “It is seriously one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with in my life,” Jones told me of having to prove her parentage. The Utah Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Jones, who was represented by NCLR, did not have standing to seek custody or visitation with the daughter she helped bring into the world with her former partner Cheryl Pike Barlow.

Not only are these cases devastating to the children and the parents who are cut out of their lives, they create bad case law and thus set back the whole LGBT movement, or parenting rights in general. As NCLR notes of the Utah Supreme Court decision, “[it] abolished protections for all children with non-biological parents rather than provide these protections equally to children with lesbian parents.”

The standards are common-sense reminders to LGBT people to respect and honor their family relationships in the best interest of the children involved, regardless of legal labels (#2). We hope that couples can come to a voluntary resolution (#5) and that litigation is used as a last resort (#9). It’s also our hope that couples don’t resort to homophobic / transphobic law and sentiments (#10). As Mary, who authored the original standards, writes in the revised version, “Do not resort to arguments that a person who is not a ‘legal’ parent has no right to seek custody or visitation.”

Protecting Families was first published in 1999 in response to a steady stream of custody battles involving same-sex couples. GLAD, with assistance from NCLR and its National Family Law Advisory Council updated the standards to reflect recent changes in relationship recognition laws, including the implementation of marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples in many states.

Despite advances in relationship recognition, which provide more protections for non-biological parents, the custody battles persist, due to a combination of inconsistencies in family law from state to state and because some LGBT people just refuse to play fair in the heat of a bitter break-up.

It’s our collective hope that these revised standards and our renewed push to raise awareness of them in the LGBT and legal communities might help change the dynamic that has become all too common in our community.