Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 16:55:26 -0700 From: Jean Richter Subject: 5/20/99 P.E.R.S.O.N. Project news 1. CA: East Bay regional meeting of CAPE on May 26th; Palo Alto anti-bias law may affect Boy Scouts; Petaluma opts for tolerance policies ============================================================= From: Quiva@aol.com Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 22:05:02 EDT Subject: California Alliance for Pride and Equality (l/g/b/t) I am writing on behalf of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality (CAPE), the new statewide lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender civil rights group, and Californians for Fairness, a group working to defeat the anti-gay initiative (known as the Knight Initiative), limiting marriage in California to a man and a woman, which will be on the March, 2000 ballot. (I imagine you are well aware of this already.) Please note our next meeting: CAPE East Bay Regional Meeting (Alameda and Contra Costa Counties) Wednesday, May 26, 7-9pm Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County (SMAAC) 1738 Telegraph Ave, Oakland (just above 19th St BART Station, take Telegraph Exit from station, use walkway to Telegraph Ave, turn right. SMAAC is just three doors away.) Please make an effort to attend. Our guest speaker will be Mike Marshall, the State anti-Knight Campaign Manager. He will have polling results regarding strategies to fight the initiative to share with the group, and wants to get feedback. There will also be a brief legislative update on the CAPE-sponsored bills: AB 26 (Migden) Domestic Partnership Registry AB 222 (Kuehl) Dignity for All Students Act AB 1001 (Villaraigosa) Fair Employment and Housing Act SB 75 (Murray) Domestic Partnership Registry Even with a Democratic controlled Assembly and Senate, there are no assurances that these bills will pass. You may be aware that AB222 (Kuehl's Dignity for All Students bill) is struggling to get that last "yes" vote on the floor. We cannot take anything for granted and must continue to press our case for each of the bills. For more information, please contact me (Justin Garrett ) or Marty Martinez, CAPE East Bay Regional Representative, 510 663 7956. Please share this information with all interested parties. Hope to see you on the 26th! Justin Garrett ================================================================================= http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/discrim14.htm Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 10:13:28 -0700 Subject: Palo Alto anti-bias law backed From: "Channel Q News" To: (LGBT Political Activists), queerpolitics@abacus.oxy.edu San Jose Mercury News, May 14, 1999 ( http://www.mercurycenter.com/ ) P.A. anti-bias law backed Public concerns: Fears are raised that it would punish the Boy Scouts. By Ron Kitagawa, Mercury News Staff Writer A proposed anti-discrimination ordinance for Palo Alto got general support from the public at the city's human relations commission meeting Thursday night. Fewer than a dozen people offered thoughts on the proposal, but many of them focused on whether the Boy Scouts deserved to be caught in the city's anti-discrimination net. The proposal may jeopardize the Scouts' tenancy at one of Palo Alto's community centers because of the group's membership policies. The proposed ordinance would cover how the city hires workers, funds community organizations, contracts for goods and services and leases city-owned property. If adopted, anyone who does business with the city or leases property for more than 29 days could not discriminate on grounds including race, gender, age, disability and sexual orientation. "We want to make sure we don't somehow inadvertently find ourselves doing business with unethical contractors or organizations," said Kathy Espinoza-Howard, the city's administrator for human services. Because some Boy Scout troops have excluded gays, agnostics or atheists, the proposed policy could prevent the city from continuing to lease part of the city-owned Lucie Stern Community Center to the group. One speaker, Robert Smith, whose eldest son is an Eagle Scout and youngest is a Boy Scout, said he supports the Scouts but also backs the city's proposal. The commissioners asked the speakers if they had any ideas on how to accommodate the Boy Scouts without gutting the proposed ordinance. But while most speakers, in general, supported what the Boy Scouts stand for, no one could offer a solution. Resident Ed Glazier - a former Eagle Scout who is gay - said, "To exempt the Boy Scouts from the Palo Alto ordinance would be sending the wrong message to our citizens, and especially to those young men who might otherwise benefit from the Scouting experience." Smith said, "Some of the ambiguity we're seeing tonight points out that we need an ordinance like (the one proposed). . . . If the ordinance helps clarify (the Boy Scouts') policy, then it's great." But not everyone was satisfied with how wide the city's net could be cast if the proposal were passed in its current form. John Skelton, a resident and Scout leader, said his troop hasn't always followed the strict rules set down by its parent organization, the Boy Scouts of America. "(Troop 57) is sponsored by parents and represents the values of the parents," he said. Skelton suggested an exemption for the group. The Lucie Stern Community Center has long been home to at least one Boy Scout troop and the Pacific Skyline Council, which oversees 360 troops and 14,000 Scouts from Daly City to Sunnyvale. In Berkeley last May, the city council voted to stop giving free dock space to the Sea Scouts because its parent group, the Boy Scouts of America, had discriminatory policies. The vote ended a 60-year tradition of donating dock space - worth about $12,000 per year - to the Sea Scouts. Before Thursday's meeting in Palo Alto, all tenants who rent space from the city, 10 of its largest contractors, some non-profit organizations and a number of churches, synagogues, mosques and Buddhist temples were invited to take part in the discussion, said Andrew Pierce, vice chairman of the commission. But few turned out. Pierce, who was one of the key framers of the ordinance, said the intention is not to target specific groups, such as the Boy Scouts. Any group can ask for an exemption to the ordinance, he added. But whether a group gets an exemption will be determined by the city. San Francisco's anti-discrimination ordinance, for example, grants exemptions under some extreme cases, such as when only one contractor is willing to enter into a contract with the city; or when a disaster occurs, such a flood, sandbags can be purchased from anyone on an emergency basis, Pierce said. In 1991, San Francisco's board of education passed a resolution to ban the Boy Scouts from using school facilities during school hours. The policy it adopted, however, also excluded other organizations, such as the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, which prohibit gays from enlisting. The Coast Guard and Navy ran an Adopt-a-School program at some of the schools. Hoping to prevent penalizing any groups unnecessarily, Pierce said, the commission looked closely at what other cities had found to be appropriate groups to protect. Palo Alto's proposal reaches further than federal and state laws, he said. Federal and state laws cover private employment and housing, but this ordinance is directed at the city's facilities - parks, recreation, classes - contractors and the city's leasing of space, Pierce said. "There is no federal protection for sexual orientation," he said. "And the state is kind of weak on that subject." Other areas in Palo Alto's proposed ordinance not included in federal and state laws: discrimination because of housing status, including the homeless, and age discrimination against younger people, which is not included in state laws, Pierce said. The human relations commission will incorporate Thursday night's public comments into a report, then send the report with a final proposal to the city council's policy and service committee, which is made up of four council members. A final proposal should reach the full council in July, Espinoza-Howard said. ************************************************************************ This message has been distributed as a free, nonprofit informational service, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. Please do not publish, or post in a public place on the Internet, copyrighted material without permission and attribution. (Note: Press releases are fine to reprint. Don't reprint wire stories, such as Associated Press stories, in their entirety unless you subscribe to that wire service.) Forwarding of this material should not necessarily be construed as an endorsement of the content. In fact, sometimes messages from anti-gay organizations are forwarded as "opposition research." ================================================================================ Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, May 2, 1999 P. O. Box 569,Santa Rosa,CA,95402 (Fax 707-546-2437 ) (E-MAIL: letters@pressdemo.com ) ( http://www.pressdemo.com/news.html ) Petaluma takes lead in tolerance City gay rights policies among first in county By GUY KOVNER, Press Democrat Bureau PETALUMA -- Progressive politics, a persuasive advocate and a 4-year-old tragedy have combined to make Petaluma Sonoma County's leader in gay rights legislation. Three public agencies, including the city, have granted benefits to the domestic partners of their unwed employees, and Petaluma City Hall also has agreed to formally register the union of same-sex and unmarried couples. Those actions -- all taken within the past year with little or no opposition -- put Petaluma, the county's southernmost and second-largest city, in league with nine other Bay Area cities and counties that have approved domestic partners benefits or created a registry. Sonoma County officials are currently negotiating domestic partners health benefits with the county's largest employees union, but no agency outside Petaluma is known to have approved benefits or a registry, both part of the national gay rights political agenda. "Petaluma's in the forefront on a lot of issues,'' said City Councilwoman Pamela Torliatt, a Petaluma native. "This is one of them.'' A gay teen-ager's suicidal plunge from the Golden Gate Bridge in January 1995 propelled gay rights advocates to push for tolerance in Petaluma. "Robin's death has made clear to us the difficulty of growing up gay in our lovely town of Petaluma,'' wrote Stephanie Reed of her 15-year-old son Robin. The family believes he was driven to self-destruction by years of schoolyard torment. Last week, a Petaluma-based gay-lesbian support group announced plans for a counseling and information program in collaboration with the Petaluma city schools and other south county school districts. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays North Bay Chapter announced last week that they have secured a $20,000 grant for a Safe Schools program, which will get started before the end of the school year, chapter president Jim Spahr said. But there are opposing voices. Kurtis Kearl, a Petaluma church leader, said government concessions to domestic partners undermine traditional marriage, which he calls "the fundamental building block of a healthy society.'' Ron Hunt, a Christian pastor, said the City Council has been swept away by a "wave of political correctness.'' The Petaluma Health Care District, which co-sponsored the grant to Spahr's group, was the second local agency to approve health benefits for domestic partners, a step the district's five-member elected board took in December, one month before the City Council did the same. Spahr, a Petaluma insurance agent and tireless gay rights advocate, successfully lobbied both the district and the city. "I hear his words being used a lot by the policymakers,'' said Daymon Doss, the health care district chief executive officer. "I think he's been able to plant an idea that it's the right thing to do.'' But Spahr himself was surprised to learn that the Old Adobe Union School District last summer quietly became the first agency to approve domestic partner health benefits to the east Petaluma elementary district's 300 employees. The Old Adobe teachers' union requested the benefits, and the school board agreed without reservation, said Jim Janakes, the board president. "It wasn't really a big deal with us,'' he said. There was no negative reaction at the time, and there's been no backlash since, he said. Twenty years ago, the calm would have been shattered by domestic partners legislation, Janakes said. But Petaluma, often regarded as a "hick town,'' he said, has been changed by an influx of Bay Area residents in the past 15 years. Old Adobe officials said Friday they didn't know how many employees had signed up for domestic partners benefits since they were implemented in September. Only one of the city's 280 employees has registered for Petaluma's program, which took effect in February, Personnel Director Mike Acorne said. No one has signed up for the health care district's domestic partners benefits, made available April 1, Doss said. City and county officials concur that the cost of domestic partners benefits is likely to be minimal, adding from 2 to 3 percent to the total cost of employee benefits. Two weeks ago, Petaluma's council took another step, voting unanimously to create an official registry for gay, lesbian or unwed heterosexual partners -- for a $65 fee. Berkeley, Oakland and Palo Alto are the only other Bay Area cities that register domestic partners, along with Marin and Santa Clara counties, according to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "We're a pretty progressive council,'' Torliatt said. Public outcry, she said, was "very minor'' compared with other issues, such as the urban growth boundary and flood control. Spahr, a gay rights activist for more than 20 years, said the seven-member council "pretty much represents what this city thinks and feels.'' But Kearl, a former attorney who now is selling magnetic health care products, called domestic partner benefits and registry foolish policies that are part of the "decay of modern society.'' Kearl said his opposition has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Rather, he said, he is defending the "sanctity of marriage'' against any recognition of either same-sex and unwed heterosexual unions. Kearl, a bishop of Petaluma's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said his views, which he expressed to the council in January, are his own. Hunt, pastor of the year-old New Life Christian Fellowship, spoke out two weeks ago against Petaluma's registry, citing academic studies that he said show domestic partnerships involve higher rates of violence than conventional marriage, and more frequent divorce by partners who subsequently marry. But, Hunt said, the council already had its mind made up. "We were just way too late,'' he said. Kearl, who ran unsuccessfully for the Petaluma school board in 1988, also disputed the need for special services to support gay and lesbian students, contending that Petaluma schools have "no widespread or ongoing problem'' with intolerance and that existing policies are sufficient. But Marcia Koltonow, a Petaluma therapist, said there is "plenty of homophobic behavior'' in the schools, and that many residents as well as school officials either can't see it or choose not to look. Koltonow has been counseling teen-agers for three years through PRISM, a support group for gay, lesbian and bisexual youth, as well as those who are "'questioning'' their sexual orientation. Koltonow said that Petaluma schools lack the clubs and support groups found in some Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park schools. She hailed the city's creation of a domestic partners registry, saying it sends a welcome message to gay and lesbian youth: "My life has validity,'' she said, quoting the message. "I have hope for the same sort of relationship in my life as others do.'' Press Democrat, May 2, 1999 Santa Rosa, CA Teen's fate ignited activist By GUY KOVNER PETALUMA -- Jim Spahr read the story about Robin Reed, a creative, 15-year-old kid who wore thrift store clothes, leaping from Golden Gate Bridge to his death on Jan. 24, 1995. Spahr, a Petaluma insurance agent, knew instantly what it took Reed's parents about seven months to comprehend. "That boy was gay,'' Spahr, 59, recalled last week. He knew it instinctively, he said, after two decades of advocacy and close association with the Bay Area gay and lesbian community. Reed's death yanked Spahr out of a self-imposed retirement from gay rights activism. A Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, Spahr had resigned from the Sonoma County AIDS Commission in 1989 after a highly publicized feud with then-State Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Rohnert Park. He'd hoped to relax, and tend to business and family. But Spahr's definition of family is pretty large, and he seems unable to not get involved. "Jim just never stopped being political,'' said Jackie Spahr, his second wife. "It's who he is.'' They were married by Jim's first wife, Jane Spahr, an ordained Presbyterian minister who has fought the church's refusal to grant her a congregation since the church discovered in 1980 that she is a lesbian. Jim Spahr said he had known, from the start of their 13-year marriage, that Jane Spahr was a lesbian. But it took her years to acknowledge, largely because she had so much to lose professionally. The ordeal, Jim Spahr said, made him believe that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice. Watching friends and insurance clients die of AIDS in the 1980s took a personal toll. It also hurt Spahr's business, and hardened his commitment to the cause, which Spahr brought to Petaluma in 1985, when he moved from San Rafael. Daymon Doss, chief executive officer of the Petaluma Health Care District, described Spahr as "articulate'' and "a true believer.'' One more thing: "He won't go away,'' Doss said. Spahr had hoped that Robin Reed, a sophomore at Petaluma High School, would be the last gay teen suicide in town. He believes, however, that two other gay teens have since killed themselves. Four years after Reed's fatal plunge, Spahr has launched a program called Safe Schools, aimed at fighting prejudice and emotionally sheltering gay, lesbian and bisexual teens. He asked for a grant of $135,000 over three years, got $20,000 for one year, and cheerfully said, "We can get more money elsewhere.'' "We want to get everyone talking to each other,'' Spahr said. "Parents, students, gays and straights.'' Not everyone agrees that Petaluma has a problem, but Spahr said support comes from unexpected corners. Spahr ambled out of a Petaluma market one day, and a surly teen, seeing his customary gay rights ribbon and T-shirt, muttered: "Fag.'' Before Spahr could react, he said, a burly, unkempt workingman leaned into the kid's face and yelled: "I don't know what the hell he is, but you're an a------.'' The man stomped away, departing in a dirty pickup truck. "That's Petaluma,'' Spahr said. ================================================================================= Jean Richter -- richter@eecs.berkeley.edu The P.E.R.S.O.N. Project (Public Education Regarding Sexual Orientation Nationally) CHECK OUT OUR INFO-LOADED WEB PAGE AT: http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/