Equality Camp

2 responses so far ↓

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  MPetrelis // January 20, 2009 at 9:43 pm

  hi,

  thanks for asking people to submit questions that you’ll try to bring up at the summit in LA. here are a few questions i hope get addressed by EQCA and attendees from SF:

  1. when will EQCA get around to holding a summit in SF for those of us who can’t make it to LA? sure, it’s great so many from the bay area are heading to the LA summit, and some of it will be broadcast on the web, but there still is ample reason for a summit in SF.

  2. why has it been EQCA policy to not hold public community meetings? before we lost gay marriage in CA in november, our statewide group held no town halls. they have none planned. we need regularly scheduled meeting with our state leaders, so they can hear from us, and we can learn what they are up to.

  3. is hiv over for EQCA? i haven’t seen anything on their summit page or the agenda related to hiv/aids? for people with aids on disability, who might take advantage of gay marriage, are concerned about impacts on their federal benefits. it’s also been suggested that gay marriage can reduce hiv infections, something i’d like more data on. nevertheless, i’m concerned hiv in not the summit agenda.

  4. last point, for tonight. why is a plenary devoted to NGLTF’s questionable, some might say debunked, study on voters and prop 8? surely there are more important things to discuss than the study.

  btw, here is an excerpt and link to a recent sacramento bee column on the study:

  Sacramento Bee
  19 Jan 09

  Dan Walters: Yes, California minority voters axed gay marriages
  By Dan Walters
  dwalters@sacbee.com

  Advocates of same-sex marriage rights were shocked when, contrary to some
  pre-election polls, California voters last year passed Proposition 8,
  which would bar such unions, by nearly 600,000 votes.

  They were doubly dumbfounded that the measure passed in a record-high
  turnout election in which Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
  defeated Republican John McCain in California by 3.2 million votes.

  They were trebly traumatized when exit polls found that very strong
  majorities of African American and Latino voters favored Proposition 8 —
  more than providing its margin of victory.

  When this column pointed out that the pro-Obama surge of black and Latino
  voting was mathematically responsible for Proposition 8′s passage, it
  punched hot buttons in national media and led to a furious debate,
  exchanges of harsh words and, interestingly enough, a research project
  financed by the San Francisco-based Evelyn & Walter Haas Foundation that
  sought to prove it wasn’t true.

  The study, conducted by two academics from New York universities, was
  released this month by a consortium of gay rights groups, which claimed
  that its findings “debunk myths about African American voting on marriage
  equality.”

  Well, no, it doesn’t.

  Read on:

  http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/1554402.html

• 

  MPetrelis // January 22, 2009 at 11:30 am

  hi again. more questions you might want to raise with the no on 8 leaders: why did they never released the names of the executive committee members on the no on 8 site? why have they been so resistant to calls that the names be made public?

  here is an article from the LA Weekly’s blog today that should be of interest to all going to the LA summit:

  http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/queer-town/queer-town-no-on-8-executive-c/

  Queer Town: “No on 8″ Executive Committee Revealed
  by Patrick Range McDonald
  January 22, 2009 8:00 AM

  Late yesterday, gay rights activist and blogger Michael Petrelis accomplished the seemingly impossible–he found and published the 16 “principal officers” of the “No on 8″ campaign’s executive committee. If you think that kind of information would have been easily available, you are very, very wrong. As Petrelis writes in his post, “It’s easier to locate the names of the Chinese politburo than the names of the ruling body of No on 8.”

  Indeed. Despite the fact that the executive committee spent over $40 million of donations from the general public to defeat Proposition 8, and despite the fact that they were fighting a battle to maintain the legal right for gays and lesbians from anywhere in the world to marry in California, the leaders of the “No on 8″ campaign have consistently refused to name its 16 principal officers.

  Going back to October, I first asked for a list of names and no one at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center or Equality California — two of the main organizations involved in the “No on 8″ campaign — could “remember” who sat on the executive committee or its sub-committees. Petrelis started his quest even earlier, requesting information in September.

  I never understood the reason for the secrecy, and no one gave me a good explanation for it. But whenever people in power are hiding basic information about who’s running the show, it’s usually because they don’t want to be blamed for one thing or another. In this case, the “No on 8″ executive committee probably didn’t want to take the fall for the debacle that happened on November 4, 2008, when a slim majority of voters in California passed Proposition 8.

  (Side Note: I always found it curious that Lorri Jean, one of the members of the executive committee, was incredibly quick to divert all attention away from the failures of the “No on 8″ campaign — which were many — and point the finger at the Mormon church. Jean, if you remember, first started the Mormon backlash on Wednesday, November 5 at a rally in West Hollywood, whipping people up and announcing a demonstration at the Los Angeles Mormon Temple on Thursday, November 6. She continued with her anti-Mormon rant for the next several days whenever she could grab a microphone. Then Jean skipped town for several weeks, and returned from vacation this month, according to press reports.)

  Anyhow, here are the people who spent your political contributions and led the losing cause to defeat Proposition 8, which is now costing more money to repeal and has caused a ripple effect throughout the country where politicians in such places as New York and Minnesota have stalled pro-gay marriage legislation.

  “No on 8″ Executive Committee, Principal Officers:

  Geoff Kors, executive director, Equality California;
  Lorri Jean, chief executive officer, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center;
  Kate Kendell, executive director, National Center for Lesbian Rights;
  Michael Fleming, executive director, David Bohnett Foundation;
  Marty Rouse, national field director, Human Rights Campaign;
  Heather Carrigan, ACLU of Southern California;
  Oscar De La O, Beinestar Human Services in Los Angeles;
  Sue Dunlop, Los Angeles;
  Maya Harris, ACLU of Northern California;
  Don Howes, Los Angeles;
  Dennis Herrera, City Attorney of San Francisco;
  Dr. Delores Jacobs, chief executive officer, San Diego LGBT Community Center;
  Joyce Newstadt, San Francisco;
  Tawal Panyacosit, director, Asian and Pacific Islander Equality in San Francisco;
  Rashid Robinson, Los Angeles;
  Kevin Tilden, communications/political consultant, San Diego;
  and “No on 8″ treasurer, Steve Mele, founder of ML Associates in West Hollywood.

  Equality California will be hosting an “Equality Summit” in Los Angeles on Saturday, Jan. 24, but it’s not open to the general public and the organization has set certain rules for how journalists can cover the event. Many of the “No on 8″ leaders will no doubt be in attendance.

  Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.