Sorry kids. Looks like your chain has been yanked yet again. According to the LGBT POV blog, the 9th District Fed Court issued a press release this morning squelching the rumor that the Prop 8 trial closing arguments might be televised.
Read here for more.
Possibly Related Posts:
It doesn’t matter if he’s gay, eh? Of course it doesn’t—-for people who don’t have problems with gay judges.
The Liberty Counsel, a non-profit religious and political organization based out of Orlando, Florida, sent out a press statement today demanding that Judge Vaughn Walker recuse himself from the Prop 8 trial. The Liberty Counsel resolutely believes Judge Walker’s sexuality would undoubtedly color his ability to make a sound and unbiased ruling on the case.
We assure you this Judge Walker fan club is just starting to ramp up membership. There will be more to come on the judges sexuality from the freaked out bible thumpers without a shred of doubt.
If you all remember, this past weekend the San Francisco Chronicle outed Judge Walker.
Read the rest of this entry »
Possibly Related Posts:
Very interesting….the developments from the Prop 8 trial never cease to amaze. Based on this last piece of news there will be more to come no doubt. Today the San Francisco Chronicle reveals that Prop 8 trial Judge Vaughn Walker is himself, gay. We’re not even gonna bore you with our thoughts on the matter. We’ll just turn you on to the source. Although we will say this much: if Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexuality was a non-issue in terms of the Prop 8 case, why wasn’t it revealed before now?
Read the following:
Judge being gay a nonissue during Prop. 8 trial
The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.
Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say the 65-year-old jurist, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, has never taken pains to disguise – or advertise – his orientation.
They also don’t believe it will influence how he rules on the case he’s now hearing – whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters to ban same-sex marriage, unconstitutionally discriminates against gays and lesbians.
“There is nothing about Walker as a judge to indicate that his sexual orientation, other than being an interesting factor, will in any way bias his view,” said Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8.
Read the rest of this entry »
Possibly Related Posts:
Holy Ca-moly. Talk about a stunning line of developments. Today, Rick Jacobs, head of Courage Campaign filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission accusing Prop 8 defense attorney Andrew Pugno of misusing public funds to help pass the the Knight initiative, a ’90s state legislative effort that called for the ban of gay marriages in California.
Read the following from Courage’s Trial Tracker Web site:
Read the rest of this entry »
Possibly Related Posts:
This is bound to be more interesting than the actual blow by blow coverage of the trial. The only thing about this re-enactment is that it makes all too clear to us that the Prop 8 trial could easily be called the Prop “White” trial. Other than pro Prop 8 Asian defendant William Tam, that’s about as much as you’re going to see anyone of color remotely related to this court proceeding. That’s sad we think. And yet another very valid reason why LGBTs of color are not engaged with the trial as they could be. They don’t see anybody who looks like them associated with it.
As some of you have heard this re-enactment YouTube series is the brainchild of LA-based filmmaker John Ireland. We actually know John. He, his partner and their adopted son participated in RENWL’s very first neighborhood marriage equality canvass in the Country Club Park community just north of West Adams. We forget the boy’s name but he’s the cutest kid. Both John and his partner are white and they adopted an African American little boy. Canvassing for marriage equality in a black neighborhood one can imagine some of the reactions they received as John and his partner went knocking door to door asking people to support marriage equality with their son. Of course they told people he was their child. Based on the feedback from John after the canvass however, he said folks were very cool. Having his son come along made a big impression and a big difference. We have no doubt about that.
So that’s our 5 minute brush with fame. We hope that this video series gains a huge following. We’ll be posting them as they’re released on Youtube. For more information on the videos and John Ireland’s background go this link at: Marriage Trial.
Possibly Related Posts:
If anyone’s noticed we’ve been rather slovenly in our Prop 8 trial coverage this week. There’s a reason for that.
Here’s the deal: we got bored.
Oh, we know we’re SUPPOSED to be besides ourselves slurping up every second someone utters a word. Well, that was cute the first week. We loved hopping on every untwittered headline that came our way. Our page views shot through the roof—-oh it was very good for business. For a second there we believed ourselves to be the www darlings of Prop 8 coverage and firsthand news bits. But this second week we’re like—yawn—wonder what’s Judge Judy up to today? That’s the closest we’ve come to getting worked up over a court proceeding these days. We just don’t care anymore. We’ll either win or we won’t is now our thought on things. There’s more than ample enough coverage anyway. Clearly you all must be thinking Prop 8 trial coverage overkill by now. We are.
This allows us to turn our attention to other things. For instance, we’ve noticed a cultural divide in the attention paid to the Prop 8 trial and its coverage. Why the only blogger of color we can think of that’s actually covering this trial or attempting to rather, is Pam’s House Blend. But that’s about it. And even in that we wouldn’t exactly say PHB’s a big hub for POCs anyway. That’s not a slam. Matter of fact more like a compliment especially since PHB appeals to all types of gay people—even us—minus of course the David Mixner and John Aravosis posts Pam Spaulding favors from time to time. That, we don’t like.
Getting back to the Prop 8 trial coverage and our perceived lack of interest by gays of color—we don’t know why that is. It could be of course that as we noted in our re-enactment post earlier today, there’s no people of color anywhere near the trial. That actually can make a difference we think on if black, Latino and Asian gay folks would be on the hustle about the latest updates and trial happenings. Maybe that’s why we got bored ourselves in covering it. We wonder could the Prop 8 trial fall under the heading of stuff white people like? It’s a thought.
In any case, starting tomorrow (Friday) we’re going to try a new experiment. We’re going to also start to feature posts about the Oscar Brown trial. We think peeps of color might be interested in that. We’ll continue to provide some skim milk type of coverage of the Prop 8 trial but we’ll add the Brown trial into the mix and see what happens. Sounds good? Cool.
Possibly Related Posts:
NLGJA's Michael Triplett
Ironically in his post this afternoon on the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) blog which is titled React, NLGJA board member Michael Triplett took aim at gay bloggers, orgs and individuals covering the Prop 8 trial. After “blogging” that most of the trial coverage is being handled by veteran journalists Karen Ocamb and Lisa Keen—as well as a mention of a smattering of traditional LGBT news outlets and publications, Triplett goes on to say the following:
“The challenge for traditional LGBT media is that they are forced to compete with the online world where no one is paying for coverage. While LGBT bloggers are providing extensive coverage of the trial, they are serving as aggregators and piggy-backing on the coverage paid for by traditional media sources. But covering a trial like this costs money and the LGBT media often lacks the resources to devote to paying for coverage.
There is also extensive use of live-blogging and tweets from inside the courtroom. While this coverage is interesting, it also has its problems. First, beyond the coverage by the Advocate, none of the blogging is really being done by LGBT journalists. Instead, we get self-interested advocacy groups–the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Courage Campaign, American Foundation for Equal Rights–providing much of the play-by-play.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Possibly Related Posts:
Gotta love the guy’s chutzpah. The lead counsel for the Prop 8 defense Andrew Pugno just doesn’t seem to get that being treated as less than or being viewed by society as some sort of freak somehow can actually impact a person’s self-worth. In his latest entry on the Protect Marriage blog he compares what he obviously views as the ridiculous notion of gay social stress and outcastdom as similar to special class considerations and imaginary demands of stutterers and exceptionally tall people.
Andrew really? Oh really?
It blows our mind the level of insensitivity and lack of empathy others display when not having had to walk in someone else’s shoes. Of course it would be hard to showcase the prism of emotions one carries throughout their daily lives when a majority of one’s society has determined that you are not worthy of the same privileges as they. That’s just not something you can act out in an impromptu game of charades. It either takes having the experience yourself to know the feeling or the simple act of compassion and the willingness to understand another human beings challenges when it it is so very clear that their path is very different than your own.
You’d think a college educated and intelligent man like Pugno could easily grasp that. But there’s almost this stubborn and unforgiving refusal to acknowledge that Prop 8 hurt people—-period. As though to do so would be a treason of sorts. To simply acknowledge that it hurt other human beings. Even if to just put the sexual identity aspect and constitutionality of it aside and just acknowledge that it hurt somebody. Is that too much to ask?
Here’s Pugno’s summation of the Prop 8 trial, day 4
Read the rest of this entry »
Possibly Related Posts:
